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=none 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 81E21BC6C for ; Fri, 1 Feb 2008 20:49:21 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAPIGo0fUVZgL/2dsb2JhbACufQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,291,1199660400"; d="scan'208";a="6829954" Received: from hades.snarc.org ([212.85.152.11]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 01 Feb 2008 20:49:20 +0100 Received: by hades.snarc.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id AD4891B482; Fri, 1 Feb 2008 20:49:16 +0100 (CET) Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 20:49:16 +0100 To: Jonathan Bryant Cc: Jon Harrop , caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] [OSR] Caml Community Code Message-ID: <20080201194916.GB11881@snarc.org> References: <200802010914.41643.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <4a051d930802010556n22ad973co1a0f357789dafc4c@mail.gmail.com> <200802011807.53876.jon@ffconsultancy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Warning: Email may contain unsmilyfied humor and/or satire. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-11) From: tab@snarc.org (Vincent Hanquez) X-Spam: no; 0.00; camlp:01 compiler:01 ocaml:01 tarball:01 ocaml:01 stdlib:01 imho:01 wrote:01 wrote:01 incompatible:01 incompatible:01 caml-list:01 caml:02 caml:02 terribly:03 On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 02:00:19PM -0500, Jonathan Bryant wrote: > I think that backwards-incompatibility, despite what INRIA may say, is not > terribly important. Let us not forget that they set a precedent when they > released a incompatible and scantily documented, yet significantly improved, > CamlP4 unannounced in 3.10. > > I think that if the community wrote a new, significantly improved but > incompatible standard library and handed it to INRIA, INRIA would be hard > pressed to find a reason not to release an backwards-incompatible Caml 4.0, > given there was a configure switch when building the compiler to build it > using a frozen 3.x library, which was not possible 3.9 -> 3.10. After all, > incompatibilities are what major version numbers are for. > > >From then on, the OCaml team could ship a language only tarball (plus > compatability library) and concentrate on exactly what they are good at: > writing a great implementation of OCaml, without us bugging them about > improving the library. All of the package managers being discussed could > pull the language from INRIA and the "new" stdlib from wherever it is housed > and automagically put the two together. I just want to say that I really agree with this vision as well. That's the only way this ocaml community thing is going to work IMHO. -- Vincent Hanquez