From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBA97BC69 for ; Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:07:24 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CABrljUfUnw7Ulmdsb2JhbACCNo1fAgEBBwQGBwoRB54Q X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.24,296,1196636400"; d="scan'208";a="6152757" Received: from ptb-relay01.plus.net ([212.159.14.212]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 16 Jan 2008 20:07:24 +0100 Received: from [80.229.56.224] (helo=beast.local) by ptb-relay01.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1JFDbf-0007HU-OV for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:07:23 +0000 From: Jon Harrop Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Hash clash in polymorphic variants Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:00:25 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <627467.86096.qm@web54605.mail.re2.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <627467.86096.qm@web54605.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200801161900.25125.jon@ffconsultancy.com> X-Spam: no; 0.00; hash:01 variants:01 bindings:01 ocaml:01 ocaml's:01 ffi:01 bindings:01 gtk:01 kde:01 ocaml:01 compilation:01 regexps:01 virgin:98 frog:98 polymorphic:01 On Wednesday 16 January 2008 15:02:54 Dario Teixeira wrote: > I'm inclined to agree. I would even go as far as saying that the lack of > Qt bindings is perhaps the biggest open sore as far as Ocaml library > support is concerned. As I understand it, OCaml's FFI makes writing Qt bindings an enormous undertaking which is why we don't have any. I'm happy with GTK for now and would rather see OpenGL 2 bindings instead. > The guys at Trolltech, however, seem quite keen on having Qt on as many > platforms as possible (Qt-Jambi, which brings Qt to the JVM is one of their > products). Couldn't this whole auto-generation of bindings be made easier > if they got involved? I am sure they already have plenty of tools in > place to facilitate it. Even if they were not to commit actual manpower > to the effort, they might still be able to help. I found TrollTech's customer support awful as a customer so I very much doubt they will go out of their way to help a really obscure virgin corner of the Qt market. That was a few years ago though. > And incidentally, the afore mentioned Qt-Jambi, together with the Ocamljava > project might provide a last-resort solution in the absence of native > bindings. Another possibility might be the Qyoto/Kimono project (which > brings Qt/KDE into .net) together with the OcamlIL project (if it's still > alive). You would then use Mono to run Ocaml programmes. I evaluated various such options recently and decided that Mono is truly awful (very poorly written, unreliable and slow) and LLVM is absolutely superb (extremely well-written C++ with complete native OCaml bindings!). Moreover, Mono appears to have no future in its current form whereas LLVM has serious backers and is improving at a tremendous rate. Even if you don't want to implement a whole new language or backend, using LLVM's JIT compilation for code generation has great potential for OCaml, e.g. regexps. I highly recommend giving it a play! -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e