From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id DAA02174; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 03:33:04 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA02705 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 03:33:02 +0100 (MET) Received: from psyche.kaba.or.jp (psyche.kaba.or.jp [202.249.19.1]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2C2X0f26759 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 03:33:01 +0100 (MET) Received: from mail.kaba.or.jp (cascade.kaba.or.jp [202.249.19.34]) by psyche.kaba.or.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9F95229BC; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 11:32:58 +0900 (JST) Received: from WARP (dhcp04.kaba.or.jp [202.249.19.39]) by mail.kaba.or.jp (Postfix) with SMTP id 72DD049A6B; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 11:32:58 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <01a001c2e83f$95230880$2713f9ca@WARP> From: "Nicolas Cannasse" To: "Guillaume Marceau" , References: <200303111023.LAA09578@pauillac.inria.fr> <1047392843.16158.2192.camel@anquetil> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 11:32:09 +0900 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 X-Spam: no; 0.00; cannasse:01 warplayer:01 caml-list:01 matured:01 coders:01 usages:01 developpers:01 debugger:01 gui:01 debug:01 ocaml:01 nicolas:01 cursor:01 emacs:01 syntax:02 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk > One other unrelated observation on language acceptance: > > In the the industry, they accept new languages as their IDE become > usable. Somehow, a solid IDE has become the sign that the language > matured and is now stable enough for industrial usage. Also, by their > own account, industrial coders spent so much time in VC++, they are now > IDE-dependent. IDE in this context means one-key compilation, hypertext > jumps between name usages and definitions, and a tree overview of the > components of the project, context sensitive work completion and context > sensitive help, etc. Ocaml would gain at having an official IDE project > which implement these features. You're raising here a remanent subject :) This had been in my mind (and also in the mind of several other people of this list I think) since I started with OCaml. Right now, as one of the few ocaml-windows developpers, I'm editing and compiling Ocaml under Visual Studio 6. The language is not fully integrated since VC6 does not enable it ( while .Net can do it, but is far more expensive and more difficult to deploy for a single basic user ). There is the workspace, syntax highlightning, automatic compilation, one-key compilation start and compilation-error-jump-to-file+line. So it is right now quite convenient to work with. An IDE will require a far more level of integration such as the possibility to "debug" types visualy when having an error ( e.g. just put your mouse / cursor on a variable to see its type ) , perhaps an integrated debugger , and of course a multiplatform (unix+windows) GUI since doing it from unix-only won't help people from the industry and doing it for windows only won't help the large part of the ocaml community. The problem here is that such kind of editor is more or less a personnal choice, and if you want the current OCaml+Emacs users to switch to such an IDE, you'll have to make it fully customizable and add key features that will make the difference. Quite a challenge. Nicolas Cannasse ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners