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 mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 53C73BBAF for ; Sat, 4 Oct 2008 15:30:21 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AosBAHwM50hC+VyrlGdsb2JhbACBcU2QZT4BAQEBCQkMBxEDnnKGRwEC X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.33,360,1220220000"; d="scan'208";a="18202167" Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.171]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 04 Oct 2008 15:30:21 +0200 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id y2so1539063uge.4 for ; Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:30:20 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:organization:to:subject:date :user-agent:references:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:message-id:from; bh=nrdME2zEmiiJ2gF9kmR/UTyKbeGb5DbjhOhdNNwQGb8=; b=XXqx5GUcqLKnSGL2f/4Yqp5PHTXFKOse9XKedNECFXbkTUMSQtK/K4QKKhI/qxseeS x6Un+4nSbBB06RAazXtOJtUkRpHXCyvHL6EQqqbnE5Fpgki3lcUnaGSKBJhl/MShZpk8 6PXMjVhjaJ5QjOVMIcAg8hKiDzxkUDk5dGSCM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=organization:to:subject:date:user-agent:references:in-reply-to :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding :content-disposition:message-id:from; b=PMCu3WPIEJt0EBLIadSdC0Pu6L8XyGopJTTo2MSOf7bqc9LMj07ec6vdrMVcbMLBM6 bvrRPxjfAc/LI5dilnDHilP0sY6GY2I8SZPYlMB6sy+03aV3GbC4aD9BWngh3sUCDnpF MOp/vl3VB1TG12RgKnqeRMVnLSms/krfCGlvE= Received: by 10.210.49.7 with SMTP id w7mr2596294ebw.100.1223127020565; Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:30:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from leper.local (host86-139-250-145.range86-139.btcentralplus.com [86.139.250.145]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g11sm5002713gve.8.2008.10.04.06.30.19 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:30:20 -0700 (PDT) Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Metaprogramming features Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 15:31:18 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.9 References: <48E62D5B.3060400@mcmaster.ca> <200810040303.04559.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <20081004082346.GA18277@annexia.org> In-Reply-To: <20081004082346.GA18277@annexia.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200810041531.18370.jon@ffconsultancy.com> From: Jon Harrop X-Spam: no; 0.00; 0100,:01 zacchiroli:01 metaocaml:01 compiler:01 implements:01 weis:01 ocaml:01 camlp:01 ocaml:01 absorbed:98 frog:98 wrote:01 wrote:01 caml-list:01 pierre:02 On Saturday 04 October 2008 09:23:46 Richard Jones wrote: > On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 03:03:04AM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote: > > On Saturday 04 October 2008 01:49:08 Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > > > Sorry if I'm being too frank, but I don't see the usefulness of your > > > post. I would love to see basic meta-programming feature in vanilla > > > Caml, but the way to make it happen is for sure not lobbying / making > > > noise. The way is provide patches which implement the requested > > > feature. > > > > If try..finally will not be accepted what makes you think that a > > MetaOCaml patch would be accepted? > > Where did you post the working compiler patch that implements > try/finally? I asked if it would be worth doing so before I even attempted it and was told that it would not be worth attempting by Pierre Weis. Xavier Leroy told me that copyright issues in French law essentially prohibit contributions from non-French programmers. > Where did you nurse the patch through many iterations, > as the language designers asked you to fix one thing and another, > before the final patch was rejected? I would like to think that the OCaml community has try..finally pinned down now. It is the first example on every Camlp4 tutorial after all... I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with having a language implementation written by language researchers for language research but almost all users would benefit enormously from a variety of simple improvements that the community could easily implement themselves were it feasible to get changes absorbed upstream more quickly. Now that OCaml is gaining traction in industry there are also a growing number of people willing to throw money around to get improvements made and we could all be benefitting from that. -- Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e