Re: [Caml-list] OASIS circular dependency in xml-light

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

I sent a preliminary pull request to break the cycles at
  https://github.com/ncannasse/xml-light/pull/3

Any comments are welcome, but we could move the discussion to this pull request.

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Gabriel Scherer
<gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the same memories of tricky circular dependencies from looking
> at the xml-light sources a while ago, and if I remember correctly
> there were some really shady Obj.magic going on at the same time. If
> people depend on this library, the best fix is probably to clean it up
> in these respects.
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 4:20 AM, Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org> wrote:
>> Well, it has seen some development in the past couple years on github.
>>
>> Anyway, back to the original problem.
>>
>> xml.ml references Dtd
>> dtd.ml references Xml (through 'open Xml', which is needed)
>>
>> xml.mli does not reference Dtd
>> dtd.mli references Xml
>>
>> Currently xml.mli is compiled, then dtd.mli, then dtd.ml and finally
>> xml.ml (there are other modules involved but they don't seem to be
>> involved in the loop). I'm not completely surprised this works but I
>> didn't know it was possible (my current version here is 4.01.0 but it
>> has probably been that way for a long time). Maybe someone else can
>> comment on that.
>>
>> I'm actually wondering how this works wrt module initialization order.
>>
>> I think the sure way would be to move at least some declarations to a
>> separate module that has no dependency on others and which both Xml and
>> Dtd could depend on.
>>
>> --
>> Adrien Nader
>>
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