socket library for ocaml

socket library for ocaml

[Robbert VanRenesse]

I have made an initial distribution of a socket library.  It is supported not
only under Unix, but, using Winsock, also under systems like Windows 95.  I
have only compiled it under Unix, and compiled and tested it under WinNT 4.0,
but expect little difficulty.  For WinNT, I used Visual C++ 4.1.

The socket module supports all socket operations, select(), and gettimeofday().
It's called Socket.  For documentation, see the Unix documentation (but use
Socket. rather than Unix.).  For many applications, it should make the Unix
library obsolete, resulting in greater portability among platforms.  For
example, it should make a port of CamlTk to Windows pretty easy, for those
whom are inclined to try this.

You can get the socket module by anonymous ftp from
   ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/isis/horus/ocaml/socket.tar[.gz]
Untar it in the otherlibs directory, and run "make" followed by "make install"
(under Windows:  nmake -f Makefile.nt).  You have to define HAS_SOCKETS in
config/s.h first.

Feedback is highly appreciated.  My hope is that Xavier will include this
in the official ocaml distribution, and we know how he insists on quality!
I'm currently not supporting the entire Winsock API (particularly not the
Winsock 2 API), but will probably add this some time in the foreseeable
future.

For those who are interested, I have an initial port of Horus/ML over the
socket library up and running.

Robbert