Working around the brittle bindings problem

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

Just occurred to me that one possible solution to our brittle bindings problem 
might be to parameterize the whole library over the external calls that are 
made. That could at least make the compiled code dependent only upon the 
version of the OCaml compiler itself and not each separate library.

Is it possible to do this using a functor? I might have to wrap the entire 
library in one giant functor but that would let the user apply the functor to 
a suitable library module in order to obtain a working implementation. Am I 
right in thinking that the result would depend only upon my interface and no 
upon the library itself (e.g. LablGL)?

If this is correct then it is probably solvable. The next best solution would 
be to open source the shim that automates this gore.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e