Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions

["Gerd Stolpmann" <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

> I suspect that all the OCaml-on-Windows enthusiasts find their needs met
> by F#. Maybe interoperability between OCaml and F# is the way to go on
> Windows.

f# is not compatible enough to do this (e.g. missing objects and
polymorphic variants). I was already thinking a bit about this, e.g.
whether it would make sense to port Ocamlnet to f#. As it is already
ported to win32 in general, this should not be too difficult regarding the
OS-level functionality, but the said language incompatibilities make it
essentially impossible.

Gerd

>
> Gaius
>
>
>
> ------------------
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alain Frisch <alain@frisch.fr>
> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:51:07
> To: Martin DeMello<martindemello@gmail.com>
> Cc: Gerd Stolpmann<info@gerd-stolpmann.de>; Jonathan
> Protzenko<jonathan.protzenko@gmail.com>; <caml-list@inria.fr>
> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions
>
> On 12/13/2011 09:21 AM, Martin DeMello wrote:
>> it's a bit frustrating for me because i don't have or
>> use windows either, but if i develop an end user app i really want it
>> to be as cross-platform as possible.
>
> This attitude partially explains why support for OCaml under Windows
> lacks behind: people want it to work, because they somehow have to
> produce applications running under Windows, but they really don't like
> this OS and certainly don't want to invest time in learning its gory
> details in order to improve the situation with OCaml.  I don't blame
> anyone here, and I'd probably avoid developing under Windows myself if
> this was not mandatory for our business.  From what I hear, this is also
> the case for other industrial users of OCaml who needs Windows support.
> (And also for large projects like Coq, etc.)
>
> There are a few talented OCaml enthusiasts who know quite a lot about
> Windows and have put some energy in improving OCaml for this OS in the
> past.  Thanks to them!
>
> As Xavier said, it would be great to find someone who'd like to join the
> core dev team in order to improve support for Windows. Anyone interested?
>
> But in order to get really good support in the long term, which includes
> community tools (packaging, porting libraries, support for Windows API
> and .Net, documentation, etc), I think we need to find a way to
> "bootstrap" a larger community of OCaml hobbyists, who consider Windows
> as their main platform.  (It might be the case that "native Windows
> users" are culturally less inclined to participate to an open source
> project, but I don't believe this is the primary explanation for the
> lack of community work for Windows. We simply need more people on board.)
>
> Good support for OCaml under Windows would benefits not only to Windows
> users, as it might simply attract a lot more people to OCaml and it
> would probably make the life easier to those who are "forced" to produce
> Windows applications.  So this questions should be of interest to the
> community as a whole.
>
> Do you guys have ideas on how to bootstrap a larger community of
> OCaml/Windows hobbyists?
>
>
> Alain
>
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-- 
Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
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