Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Lwt 2.7.0 – monadic promises; concurrent I/O

[Xavier Van de Woestyne <xavier.vdw@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5362 bytes --]

Excellent work ! Thanks a lot !

2017-01-06 19:12 GMT+01:00 Ivan Gotovchits <ivg@ieee.org>:

> Forgot to mention F# and their asynchronous workflows [1]. These guys did
> a good job of hiding a monad behind simple ideas.
> Basically, they use term "asynchronous computation" for the values of type
> `'a Lwt.t`
>
> [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/articles/
> fsharp/language-reference/asynchronous-workflows
>
> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 1:00 PM, Ivan Gotovchits <ivg@ieee.org> wrote:
>
>> These are the great news!
>>
>> And thanks for the maintainers notification, it was really helpful :)
>>
>> I have one comment, though:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Values of types 'a Lwt.t are now called promises rather than threads.
>>>   This should eliminate a lot of confusion for beginners.
>>
>>
>> And create a confusion for seasoned programmers, especially for those who
>> are accustomed to
>> C++ newly introduced concepts, like promises and futures, where a promise
>> has quite an opposite
>> meaning.  In short, it has the same meaning as a value of type  `'a
>> Lwt.u`, i.e., it is an object through
>> which a promise can be fulfilled. I think that it is better to refer to
>> Lwt.t threads as futures because they
>> are the values, whose value is determined in the future. Another way to
>> name them is `deferred`, again
>> for the same reason. You can also say, that a value of type `'a Lwt.t` is
>> a computation. You can also try
>> to borrow names from the Standard ML community, where `'a Lwt.t` like
>> objects are named as IVars.
>>
>> Finally, you may also find this project interesting [1]. This is an
>> attempt to factor out the core idea from both
>> Core Async and Lwt. In particular, the Future library allows us to write
>> a monadic code, that is independent
>> of a particular implementation (Lwt or Async or Identity monad).
>>
>> [1]: https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/bap/blob/
>> master/lib/bap_future/bap_future.mli
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 11:08 AM, Anton Bachin <antronbachin@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> I am pleased to announce release 2.7.0 of Lwt.
>>>
>>>   https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt
>>>
>>> The primary goals of this release are (1) to improve communication
>>> between maintainers and users, and (2) to prepare for (minor) breaking
>>> changes to some APIs in Lwt 3.0.0 (planned for April). The changelog is
>>> available here:
>>>
>>>   https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/releases/tag/2.7.0
>>>
>>> - Lwt now uses deprecation warnings ([@deprecated]), especially for
>>>   upcoming breaking changes [1]. This required dropping support for
>>>   OCaml 4.01.
>>> - There is a gradual, communicative, conservative process for
>>>   deprecation and breaking [2]. Maintainers of packages in OPAM get
>>>   notified proactively (see [1] again). If you have code not published
>>>   in OPAM, watch the Lwt repo, recompile the code at least once in three
>>>   months, watch this mailing list, or subscribe to the Lwt announcements
>>>   issue [3].
>>> - If a planned breaking change is a bad idea, please let the maintainers
>>>   know when you see the warning.
>>> - Lwt now uses semantic versioning [4]. The major version will grow
>>>   slowly but steadily, but this does not mean that the whole API is
>>>   being redesigned or broken.
>>>
>>> If you are releasing a package to OPAM that depends on Lwt, it is not
>>> recommended to constrain Lwt to its current major version. A major
>>> release of Lwt will break only a few APIs, and your package is likely
>>> not to be affected – if it is, you will be notified. You may, however,
>>> wish to constrain Lwt to a major version in your private or production
>>> code.
>>>
>>> - The main OPAM package lwt is getting rid of some optional
>>>   dependencies in 3.0.0, which are now installable through separate OPAM
>>>   packages lwt_ssl, lwt_glib, lwt_react. This is to reduce recompilation
>>>   of Lwt when installing OPAM packages ssl, lablgtk, and react.
>>> - Values of types 'a Lwt.t are now called promises rather than threads.
>>>   This should eliminate a lot of confusion for beginners.
>>>
>>> Lwt 2.7.0 also has a number of more ordinary changes, such as bug fixes
>>> and the addition of bindings to writev and readv. See the full
>>> changelog [5].
>>>
>>> I am working on an all-new manual, including fully rewritten API
>>> documentation with examples. It should be ready towards the end of
>>> winter.
>>>
>>> My hope is that all the above allows Lwt to be taken progressively into
>>> the future, at the same time making development more open and more
>>> humane :)
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Anton
>>>
>>>
>>> [1]: https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/issues/308
>>> [2]: https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/issues/293
>>> [3]: https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/issues/309
>>> [4]: http://semver.org/
>>> [5]: https://github.com/ocsigen/lwt/releases/tag/2.7.0
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
>>> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
>>> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
>>> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Xavier Van de Woestyne
xavier.vdw@gmail.com - TEL BE : 0474 49 53 83 | TEL FR : 06 73 38 72 84

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8138 bytes --]