From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pBGDETOw004512 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:14:29 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: ArgBAPxC607U436rlGdsb2JhbAA6CoUMo32CSSIBAQEBCQsJCRQDIoFyAQEEASNWEAsYAgImAgJJAQ0GJwUCh18CpweRZ4EvhxyCI4EWBI0QjTSMXw X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,363,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="123651768" Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.171]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 16 Dec 2011 14:14:23 +0100 Received: from office1.lan.sumadev.de (dslb-094-219-221-006.pools.arcor-ip.net [94.219.221.6]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mrbap1) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0LtlI5-1Qcs2f0yvd-011kQp; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:14:16 +0100 Received: from [192.168.178.14] (546BF816.cm-12-4d.dynamic.ziggo.nl [84.107.248.22]) by office1.lan.sumadev.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id BBB6EC00C7; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:14:15 +0100 (CET) From: Gerd Stolpmann To: Alain Frisch Cc: Aleksey Nogin , caml-list@inria.fr In-Reply-To: <4EEB3BF7.30401@frisch.fr> References: <4EDE33A0.6070004@gmail.com> <1323760512.9833.9.camel@samsung> <4EE711FB.5020602@frisch.fr> <4EE83C26.7090108@frisch.fr> <1323867161.7750.27.camel@samsung> <4EE8DC93.1000806@metaprl.org> <1323884194.7750.58.camel@samsung> <4EEB3BF7.30401@frisch.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:14:14 +0100 Message-ID: <1324041254.7750.99.camel@samsung> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.2 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:Y6id6q3dfP+i0NcWFmWXVl4/wT+oR7p3wwQ0miJA6ea ME3RArvP5X7NTQZJWuVsbkEM0+X/RE3a4g3LzrbgCrvmNnEhWg srLOPOj35FPi4T/i4JvKzf08pzE/SMkuK0Ea5DIWKBBRFZiLWs JGM+W0jQ0L2O/88/VqQBBONuR8Vm/RflvlxClpjJFEhFqcxo3x cWYtmQ1i3RDnVgBxluSyXF2mNYH8s6mLK+tlB4w6ntHk3kYcKb MEKWBX7s0MpGmXMJxMN6w1lxEjVgzkgOhr89J+nL9YOHT3CUu2 Qcpvb3EcYLwWDupyN2dTjSV2ScDKBnoHRo+oRvQ9amC/FsLsTD EvtIDZQqDaxIsb+AytQeC/dTu7tz3+i7I6nuyMqlF Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions Am Freitag, den 16.12.2011, 13:39 +0100 schrieb Alain Frisch: > On 12/14/2011 06:36 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote: > > I know, and this makes me quite optimistic that it is not that hard to > > develop standalone executables for the frequently used Unix utilities. > > It's amazing how a discussion about simplifying the life for Windows > users ends up with "let's emulate Unix under Windows"! Simple answer: There is a bootstrap problem: The existing Ocaml users are almost Unix-only. They do not care about Windows. In order to establish "Windows-typical problem solving" you need definitely more Windows users, but they will only come if you have a Windows-typical way of distribution. My thinking is that you can break this circle only if you go forward and try to make as many Unix-style solutions available under Windows as possible. Once there is a Windows community you can address it differently, but for the time being I don't see a good alternative. By the way, your plan includes Unix emulation, too, under point 3. It's only more hidden. Gerd > > A few points: > > 1. It would be useful to have a completely standalone binary > distribution of ocaml (with ocamlopt) under Windows. This can be > achieved either with little development efforts by extracting the > minimal needed subset of an mingw toolchain (an assembler, a linker, > some libraries and object files to link the main program); or with a > little bit more effort, by avoiding the need for an external toolchain > altogether. I insist: most users of OCaml under Windows won't need a C > compiler or Unix-like tools. > > 2. Binary packages for OCaml libraries could be simple .zip files to be > extracted at a precise place (under the hierarchy created by the OCaml > binary installer itself); or maybe even Windows installers. If > installing a library only amounts to clicking on a link in a web page > and run the installer, it already makes the life of the casual user much > easier. We don't necessarily need a full-blown packaging system, with > dependency tracking, versioning, automatic download, etc. > > 3. Binary packages are not created by casual users. It's not crazy to > require, at least in the short term, a decent Unix-like environment > (which includes a C compiler) in order to compile the libraries and > create the binary packages. It would be nice to adapt all the OCaml > libraries around so that they don't rely on external Unix tools, but > this is simply not going to happen. > > 4. A small group of volunteers could identify the most important OCaml > libraries around, make sure they compile fine under Windows, submit > patches upstream if the build system needs to be adapted, and produce > binary packages for these libraries. > > 5. What is important now is not to provide the ultimate package > management system for OCaml under Windows. We should focus instead on > lowering the barrier for casual users, addressing justified complaints > from beginners, making it easy to use OCaml for simple native projects > under Windows or for porting OCaml applications developed initially for > Unix. My hope is that this will be enough to attract more "native" > Windows users into OCaml, and then we (or they) can start thinking about > more ambitious goals. > > > > -- Alain >