From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pBBA6VIk010405 for ; Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:06:31 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AmYCALN/5E7U4xEIk2dsb2JhbABDhQeldyIBAQEBCQkLCRQDIoFyAQEEASNMCgULCxgCAiYCAiE2BhMUCodqAqNQkGWBNIkjgRYEjQyNMIUehz8 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,334,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="134895306" Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.8]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 11 Dec 2011 11:06:27 +0100 Received: from office1.lan.sumadev.de (dslb-188-097-010-110.pools.arcor-ip.net [188.97.10.110]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mreu0) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0M05pA-1Qjvd025S0-00uSgP; Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:06:26 +0100 Received: from [192.168.178.11] (546BF816.cm-12-4d.dynamic.ziggo.nl [84.107.248.22]) by office1.lan.sumadev.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 19FE9C00C7; Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:06:26 +0100 (CET) From: Gerd Stolpmann To: Andrei Formiga Cc: Jonathan Protzenko , caml-list@inria.fr In-Reply-To: References: <4EDE33A0.6070004@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:06:24 +0100 Message-ID: <1323597984.6079.5.camel@samsung> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.2 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:d3e5bcar9QeEWymTjwOGfWiJK+VKxHIkghozUXSbTRu Ca5nwwHvJv2oPHfbHRvCzsaosShZZm4obv96r6ya4pgbbdI3Gk V+yEM8Wn64Ts6raKCKRxW2c7Yx4u7MWlAP8llgRAKN1gPfD2Jc gbXUK8hnk1esW5w7HCh1gtC+aEU+QJ8GoNDROOttCllpHW9n43 ESvxXM++nmYGu838bhhKUwhpf9y9L40+Rx6xUQvuo3pwb6mpwQ WZEROvE1NZgcMn/JSrG9dChZV+jxmkEr4X7bAQJZoNfAWUllbI K/Yv+4Gcu2460N1k86pooZY6fJwtURIhExoKM+UZmrEEIFaL+G papp3xLxMleEFP24RkJ1PXctJUIk8QuTANU8u04TU Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions Am Samstag, den 10.12.2011, 17:32 -0300 schrieb Andrei Formiga: > On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Jonathan Protzenko > wrote: > > > > = Improving the community = > > > > I think the main point of the discussion is to improve "the community". If > > we really want to improve OCaml as a whole, then I think we can put our > > efforts on better areas than patching the compiler. > > > > == Package management system == > > > > The thing that's most needed is, imho, a package manager that works. > > Oasis-db looked very promising as far as I could tell, but Sylvain doesn't > > have as much time as he used to do. Instead of hacking on our pet projects > > (which is, I admit, very rewarding), maybe someone could step up and make > > Oasis-db happen. We don't have a single, unified answer to "what should I > > install to easily hack with OCaml?". What made Python, Perl, Haskell > > successful is the package management systems. How much longer are we going > > to shy away from this issue? Sure, it's much more fun to hack on the > > compiler. Not as useful. > > > > I think a good package system (with associated repository) and better > documentation are the two biggest things that can help OCaml's > adoption. It's true that there are languages that have become > successful without a package management system, but it has become > increasingly expected that languages have one. OCaml does not have > marketing or hype, so it has to win over new users by not creating > barriers to adoption. Plus it's much easier to work on a daily basis, > even for veterans. This is already true with GODI, which saves me a > lot of time when the library I need to install is available in its > repo. > > The question is: what should be done? What must be done to enable > OASIS-DB? Or should everyone adopt GODI? What's the situation between > these two systems? Maybe having some kind of rough roadmap would help > there. The plan is that OASIS-DB exports its packages in a format that is understood by GODI. OASIS-DB would then appear as a second source for packages. For users there would be practically no difference - godi_console just fetches packages from a second site, too. For package developers this will mean that there is a choice. More complicated packages will probably remain native GODI ones (because of the unlimited scripting) whereas the average library will be well expressable in OASIS-DB. Gerd > Regarding documentation, this is a problem in many fronts, beginning > with the book situation. Practical OCaml was a good idea, badly > executed. And Jason Hicks' fine book is probably stuck in limbo > because of legal battles and so it never came out. I recently had a > look at the Go language from Google, and the "A Tour of Go" tutorial > is very good (at http://tour.golang.org/ ). Maybe something similar > for OCaml would be a nice addition, especially given that the OCaml > Tutorial is apparently MIA. But I think having a good package manager > should come first (btw, Go has one). > > > > -- > []s, Andrei Formiga >