[Caml-list] [ANN] Lwt 3.1.0 – Promises and concurrent programming

[Anton Bachin <antronbachin@gmail.com>]

Dear Camels,

We are pleased to announce release 3.1.0 of Lwt, the library for
promises and concurrent programming.

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt

Perhaps the greatest single change is the port to Jbuilder by Andrew
Ray. See the full changelog here:

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/releases/tag/3.1.0

The Lwt core has also been thoroughly refactored and documented.
Although this is intended to make working *on* Lwt easier, it has also
been said that the new comments are very helpful to users working *with*
Lwt:

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/blob/master/src/core/lwt.ml#L105

Some of that material will be moved out into the manual, as the manual
is (re)written.


A major goal of this release cycle was to untangle Lwt, making it easier
for everyone to work on. We are clarifying and documenting all the code.

Lwt has adopted a very open development model. Contributors of all
experience levels are welcome, including OCaml beginners. Maintainers are
happy to provide mentoring, and to learn from fresh perspectives.

As part of this, Lwt has received new contributing documentation:

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt#contributing

and we maintain a list of easy starter issues, each thoroughly described
and hyperlinked:

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/labels/easy

Lwt newcomers have started with these, then moved on to more challenging
issues, or gone on to work on their own projects. We are happy to
support them and see the OCaml community grow!

Lwt has also received a pretty thorough test suite for almost all of the
core library, global improvements to code legibility, documentation
fixes, API improvements, etc. – done, in large part, by new
contributors.

Everything is subject to discussion and change. Feel free to open your
own issues, ask questions about overall direction, do design work, or
participate in any other way!

And we are always looking for new maintainers. If you feel your mental
health is excessively good, and that you need more stress and terror to
balance out your life, come work with us :) Note: we try to ensure that
fellow maintainers are not the source of stress :)

Join us in Gitter:

  https://gitter.im/ocaml-lwt/Lobby


Lwt 3.1.0 announces two breaking changes to occur in Lwt 4.0.0:

- The package lwt.simple-top will be removed. We don't believe anyone at
  all is using this.
- Lwt_chan will be removed.

There will be an Lwt 3.2.0 release in the coming months, which will
announce additional breaking changes for 4.0.0, mostly to packaging.

Lwt 3.1.0 changes the layout of the Lwt installation directory in your
OPAM switch. This does not affect the vast majority of users that depend
on Lwt using ocamlfind or Jbuilder. We don't support any other way of
depending on Lwt, so we don't consider this a breaking change. However,
if you run a project that directly depends on specific files in the
installation directory, and you are seriously affected by 3.1.0, please
let us know in this issue:

  https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/issues/456


Happy concurrent programming!