Re: [Caml-list] Print values like the toplevel's printer

[brogoff <brogoff@speakeasy.net>]

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Jim wrote:
> What we really need is generics.  I thought there was a post in the
> mailing list some time ago saying that generics was going to be
> appear in O'Caml at some point, but I haven't seen anything for a long
> time.  Does anyone know if it is still planned?
>
> Regards,
> Jim

I thought that development was to continue in the OCaml branch after 3.08.
Looking at the CVS, whre nothing has been updated for over seven months, it
appears abandoned. If that's the case, I wonder if there is an alternative
approach being considered to provide some of the desired features, like
safe value IO, dynamic typing, and overloading? I was previously under the
impression that safe value IO was a very desired feature, and that once the
machinery for that was aded that the rest of GCaml would be folded in quickly.

It isn't clear to me how the GCaml extensions would work with all of the
other extensions in OCaml (objects and variants and...) and it is already a
kind of complicated language. It would be a lot easier if the generics were just
being added to Caml Special Light.

-- Brian