[Caml-list] Changing precedence and placement of attributes

[Alain Frisch <alain.frisch@lexifi.com>]

Dear caml-list,

Following a feature request by whitequark and a pull request by Jérémie 
Dimino, we're considering two related changes to attributes:

  - Their precedence on type expressions, so that "int * int [@foo]" is 
parsed as "(int * int) [@foo]" instead of "int * (int [@foo])".

  - Their placement on constructor/field declaration, so that one would 
write "A of int [@foo]" or "a : int [@foo]" instead of "A [@foo] of int" 
or "a [@foo] : int".

References:

  - http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6612
  - https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/152

There seems to be a strong support in favor of the change (at least, 
nobody objected to it on principle).  But it can clearly break or change 
the interpretation of existing code.  I'm still in favor of doing the 
change as soon as possible.

So my question is:  would anyone be negatively impacted (or just 
shocked) if the change was done as part of the next bug fix release 
(4.02.2)?


Alain