Re: [Caml-list] Go Oracle like facility for Ocaml?

[Kenneth Adam Miller <kennethadammiller@gmail.com>]

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Wow, you did a fantastic job fielding this question. I only even found one
of those tools, OCamlspotter and some etags, otags and cscope
functionality! :)

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 4:06 AM, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>
wrote:

> (One can find a description of Go oracle's design in
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WmMHBUjQiuy15JfEnT8YBROQmEv-7K6bV-Y_K53oi5Y/view
> and its user manual in
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SLk36YRjjMgKqe490mSRzOPYEDe0Y_WQNRv-EiFYUyw/view#heading=h.kthq8ap0mdwi
> )
>
> The ecosystem of OCaml tooling is not as refined as Go's (but
> contributions are welcome). There is no centralized tool provider with
> a common interface, but several contributors have developped separate
> tool to anayze different aspects of OCaml programs:
>
> - ocamlspotter: https://bitbucket.org/camlspotter/ocamlspot
> - ocp-index: http://typerex.ocamlpro.com/ocp-index.html
> - pfff: https://github.com/facebook/pfff
> - merlin: http://the-lambda-church.github.io/merlin/
>
> These tool provide a relatively complete coverage of the information
> that can easily be retrieved from the typedtree of a program (>=4.01
> versions of the OCaml compiler have the option to generate a reified
> typedtree for external tools): the occurences of a declared/defined
> name, the definition place of a name, the type of an expression, etc.
> As far as I'm aware, there is not much in the direction of the more
> advanced static analysis feature Go's oracle supports: points-to
> information, "who may update this mutable field", etc. I'm not
> familiar with Pfff's capabilities, it may be the more advanced in this
> regard.
>
> (There is also more experimental work going on, for example Thomas
> Blanc's work on static analysis of exception flow at OCamlPro:
> https://github.com/OCamlPro/socaml-analyzer )
>
> I think merlin is the best-positioned tool to deal with
> partially-incorrect files (typical of an edition session) and
> incrementality. It also incorporates some query/analysis feature, but
> it's unclear whether those should grow inside a monolithic tool (eg.
> it could encompass the current feature set of ocp-index and
> ocamlspotter, if it does not already), or rather try to communicate
> with external analysis/query plugins. It also interacts with existing
> editors through a reasonable query-answer interface, but does not
> provide a direct command-line interface (anyone interested in this
> could work on it, it may be relatively easy to implement).
>
> There are fairly orthogonal aspects to a "answering questions about
> programs" toolbox, among which:
> 1) user-interface, interactive use, and interface with existing editors
> 2) support for incrementality and robustness under partially-incorrect
> files
> 3) knowledge of what the "project", or whole program, is; which
> dependencies are required to understand the work? (build system
> knowledge)
> 4) implementation of various program analyses and transformations
>
> Is it possible to provide them in separate programs and have them
> interact to form a useful whole? Or would it be easier, faster and
> more robust to implement them all in a monolithic program? What are
> the necessary interdependence between these aspects and what interface
> should them provide to each other?
>
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 6:00 AM, Kenneth Adam Miller
> <kennethadammiller@gmail.com> wrote:
> > If anybody knows what Go's oracle is you'll know that its a great
> > accelerator for your time; it allows expressive and meaningful searches
> to
> > be done over a source repository. It's fast and dead useful. Opengrok is
> > much the same, but to a lesser extent (having links is nice, but not
> quite
> > as powerful as oracle, I could be wrong).
> >
> > Is there anything like this for OCaml?
>

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