OCaml Weekly News

Hello

Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of March 12 to 19, 2024.

dune 3.14

Archive: http= s://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-dune-3-14/14096/7

Marek Kubica announced

We're happy to announce that Dune 3.14.2 is now available.

Note that due to a regression that was detected before publishing to opam v= ersion 3.14.1 should not be used. The fix for the regression is part of this release.

This feature brings some small bugfixes around the handling of Coq as well = as solves an issue where Dune is running on Windows in a path that contains Unicode characters. This affected e.g. users with diacri= tics or non-latin script in their name when running Dune within their home directory.

When a directory is changed to a file, correctly remove it in subsequent dune build runs. (#9327, fix #6575, @emillon)
Fix a problem with the doc-new target where transitive dependencies were missed during compile. This leads to missing expansions in the output docs. (#9955, @jonludlam)
coq: fix performance regression in coqdep unescaping (#10115, fixes #10= 088, @ejgallego, thanks to Dan Christensen for the report)
coq: memoize coqdep parsing, this will reduce build times for Coq users= , in particular for those with many .v files (#10116, @ejgallego, see also #1008= 8)
on Windows, use an unicode-aware version of CreateProcess = to avoid crashes when paths contains non-ascii characters. (#10212, fixes #10180, @emillon)<= /li>
fix compilation on non-glibc systems due to signal.h not b= eing pulled in spawn stubs. (#10256, @emillon)

Announcing OCaml Manila Meetups

Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/announcing-ocaml-manila-meetups/1= 4300/1

Thibaut Mattio announced

I'm thrilled to announce the OCaml Manila Meetup!

Seeing that OCaml doesn't seem to have reached the Philippines just yet (I = wasn't able to find existing OCaml or FP communities), the goal is to build one, starting small, with a few people meeting every month= in a coffee to hack on fun projects, and letting it grow organically.

The inaugural event is scheduled for the 4th of April: https://www.meetup.com/ocaml-= manila/events/299786391/

If you're living in Manila, or if you know anyone who would be interested i= n joining, please don't hesitate to reach out!

I would also greatly appreciate retweets if you happen to be on Twitter: https://t= witter.com/tmattio_/status/1768169167004577997

Happy hacking!

Outreachy internship demo session

Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/outreachy-internship-demo-sessi= on/14247/2

Continuing this thread, Patrick Ferris announced

The recording from the demo session is now live on watch.ocaml.org :camel:= =20

https://watch.= ocaml.org/w/b7sv1LQSVZQH6trf4xpwFX

OCaml 4.14.2 released

Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-4-14-2-released/14308/1

octachron announced

We have the pleasure of celebrating the birthday of Grace Chisholm Young by= announcing the release of OCaml version 4.14.2.

This release is a collection of safe bug fixes, cherry-picked from the OCam= l 5 branch. If you are still using OCaml 4.14 and cannot yet upgrade to OCaml 5, this r= elease is for you.

The 4.14 branch is expected to receive updates for at least one year, while= the OCaml 5 branch is stabilising.

Thus don't hesitate to report any bugs on the OCaml issue tracker (at https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml= /issues).

See the list of changes below for more details.

Installation Instructions

The base compiler can be installed as an opam switch with the following com= mands:

opam update
opam switch create 4.14.2

The source code for the release candidate is also directly available on:

Changes since OCaml 4.14.1

Runtime system:
- #11764, #12577: Add protot= ypes to old-style C function definitions and declarations. (Antonin D=C3=A9= cimo, review by Xavier Leroy and Nick Barnes)
- #11763, #11759, #11861, #12509, #12577: Use strict prototypes on primit= ives. (Antonin D=C3=A9cimo, review by Xavier Leroy, David Allsopp, S=C3=A9b= astien Hinderer and Nick Barnes)
- (breaking change) #10723: do not use -flat-namespace linking for m= acOS. (Carlo Cabrera, review by Damien Doligez)
- #11332, #12702: make sure = Bool_val(v) has type bool in C++ (Xavier Leroy, r= eport by ygrek, review by Gabriel Scherer)

Build system:

#11590: All= ow installing to a destination path containing spaces. (=C3=89lie Brami, review by S=C3=A9bastien Hinderer and David Allsopp)
#12372: Pas= s option -no-execute-only to the linker for OpenBSD >=3D 7.3 so that code sections remain readable, as needed for closure marshaling. (Xavier Leroy and Anil Madhavapeddy, review by Anil Madhavapeddy and S=C3=A9bastien Hinderer)
#12903: Dis= able control flow integrity on OpenBSD >=3D 7.4 to avoid illegal instruction errors on certain CPUs. (Michael Hendricks, review by Miod Vallat)

Bug fixes:

#12061, #12063: don't add = inconsistent equalities when computing high-level error messages for functo= r applications and inclusions. (Florian Angeletti, review by Gabriel Schere= r)
#12878: fix= incorrect treatment of injectivity for private recursive types. (Jeremy Yallop, review by Gabriel Scherer and Jacques Garrigue)
#12971, #12974: fix an unc= aught Ctype.Escape exception on some invalid programs forming recursive typ= es. (Gabriel Scherer, review by Florian Angeletti, report by Neven Villani)=
#12264, #12289: Fix compac= t_allocate to avoid a pathological case that causes very slow compaction. (= Damien Doligez, report by Arseniy Alekseyev, review by Sadiq Jaffer)
#12513, #12518: Automatica= lly enable emulated fma for Visual Studio 2019+ to allow confi= guration with either pre-Haswell/pre-Piledriver CPUs or running in VirtualB= ox. Restores parity with the other Windows ports, which don't require expli= cit --enable-imprecise-c99-float-ops. (David Allsopp, report b= y Jonah Beckford and Kate Deplaix, review by S=C3=A9bastien Hinderer)
#11633, #11636: bugfix in = caml_unregister_frametable (Fr=C3=A9d=C3=A9ric Recoules, review by Gabriel = Scherer)
#12636, #12646: More prude= nt reinitialization of I/O mutexes after a fork() (Xavier Leroy, report by = Zach Baylin, review by Enguerrand Decorne)
(breaking change) #10845 Emit frametable size on amd64 BSD (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, N= etBSD) systems (emitted for Linux in #8805) (Hannes Mehnert, review by Nicol=C3=A1s Ojeda B= =C3=A4r)
#12958: Fix= tail-modulo-cons compilation of try-with, && and || expressions. (Gabriel Scherer and Nicol=C3=A1s Ojeda B=C3=A4r, report by Sylvain Boilard= , review by Gabriel Scherer)
#12116, #12993: explicitly= build non PIE executables on x86 32bits architectures (Florian Angeletti, = review by David Allsopp)
#13018: Don= 't pass duplicate libraries to the linker when compiling ocamlc.opt and when using systhreads (new versions of lld emit a warning). (David Allsopp, review by Nicol=C3=A1s Ojeda B=C3=A4r)

Docfd 3.0.0: TUI multiline fuzzy document finder

Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-docfd-3-0= -0-tui-multiline-fuzzy-document-finder/14314/1

Darren announced

Hi all, I am happy to announce Docfd 3.0.0, which adds a non-interactive se= arch mode and support of DOCXs and other file formats via pandoc, as well as many polishes.

Repo

Think interactive grep for text files, PDFs, DOCXs, etc, but word/token bas= ed instead of regex and line based, so you can search across lines easily.

Docfd aims to provide good UX via integration with common text editors and = PDF viewers, so you can jump directly to a search result with a single key press.

Demos

Navigating repo:

3D"repo.gif"

Quick search with non-interactive mode:

3D"repo-non-interactive.gif"

PDF navigation:

3D"pdf-viewer-integration.jpg"

Shape with us the New OCaml.org Community Area!

Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/shape-with-us-the-= new-ocaml-org-community-area/14322/1

Claire Vandenberghe announced

I=E2=80=99m reaching out to request a few minutes of your time to review th= e wireframe for the OCaml community area. Following user interviews with those unfamiliar with OCaml, we gathered insights on what w= ould be helpful for you landing on the community page.

As a result, we=E2=80=99re restructuring aspects of the pages and content o= n the landing page. This is a wireframe, so the focus is on checking the navigation, layout, and content, not the User Interface (UI).

Your feedback are needed at this stage, and please feel free to leave comme= nts directly on Figma, via email, or let=E2=80=99s schedule a quick call. Thank you for participating in this review. Have a great day an= d week ahead.

Link: https://www.figma.com/file/7hmoWkQP9PgLTfZCqiZMWa/OCaml-Co= mmunity-Pages?type=3Ddesign&node-id=3D152%3A386&mode=3Ddesign&t= =3DjzXnvmUyoQth2558-1

Page: =E2=80=9CWireframe=E2=80=9D

Opam-repository: Updated documentation, retirement and call fo= r maintainers

Archive: https://discuss.oca= ml.org/t/opam-repository-updated-documentation-retirement-and-call-for-main= tainers/14325/1

Kate announced

After having been maintainer of opam-repository for the past 6 and half yea= rs, I'm publicly announcing my retirement from it, to focus on opam itself. This change has been more or less already in effect s= ince September last year (following a burnout) and I have since been working on writing enough documentation so that my move away fro= m opam-repository can be as smooth as possible.

This documentation is now live in:

CONTRIBUTING.md: documentation at destination of package main= tainers. This document has been rewritten in hopes of being more helpful fo= r beginner and well as experimented publishers.
the opam-repo= sitory wiki, which now also includes:
- a FAQ=
- informations about the infrastructure
- a = governance / points of contacts document
- a helper on How To deal with CI
- a list of all the current policies i could think of, as well as their reaso= ning and exceptions. These policies were previously mostly passed down oral= ly, most of them have been in place since the very beginning
- several documents at destination of current opam-repository maintainers= and opam-repository maintainers in training, all freely accessible for the= curious eyes (although rereading them now, i will admit those documents ar= e not my finest work, as they were the first ones i wrote in the past 6 mon= ths =F0=9F=99=88)

Any improvements to these documents are also welcome. To contribute simply = open a PR on opam-repository, or a ticket on the opam-repository= bugtracker to contribute to the wiki.

Hopefully, all these documents are a solid enough base so that they get upd= ated as time goes on, by current and future opam-repository maintainers.

I'm also writing this post to call for said future opam-repository maintain= ers: if you want to become a maintainer, feel free to contact @mseri and @raphael-proust. I do recommend the experience of workin= g with them on opam-repository =F0=9F=98=8A

DkCoder 0.1.0

Archive: = https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-dkcoder-0-1-0/14327/1

jbeckford announced

I wrote an article DkCoder: Intro to Scripting that describes a very early cut of= OCaml-ified scripting:

Hello Builder! Scripting is a small, free and important piece of DkSDK. Wal= k with me as we use the DkSDK tool "DkCoder" to write little scripts that become full-fledged programs. My hope is that = within minutes you feel like your dev experience is as productive as in Python, but enhanced so you:

have nothing to install except Git and optionally Visual Studio Code
have safe and understandable code ("static typing")

DkCoder is a transparently installed OCaml 4.14 environment with one API: r= un a script. It shouldn't be confused with conventional OCaml distributions, although underneath DkCoder has the conventional bytec= ode binaries=C2=B9, and dune and ocamllsp.

No C compiler, Cygwin/MSYS2, Homebrew or MacPorts are needed. Please skim t= he article for the exact Windows/macOS/Linux requirements.

It grew out of two things:

My frustrations sharing scripts with others. It was easy for inter-depe= ndencies between scripts to break POSIX shell scripts (the basis of the DkM= L installer) and CMake scripts (most of my tools).
My need to have a good delivery vehicle for my own software.

Please don't do anything major with DkCoder yet. In fact, if you think you'= ll be using DkCoder for your own scripts or your own software, please send me a message so I can prioritize/deprioritize.

I'd like to thank @octachron for the codept analyzer. It is lightly used now but as hinted in the Security section of the article it will become much more important. And= also thanks to the projects that have fixed their newly discovered bytecode-only bugs over the past two months.

=C2=B9: Actually, I bundle a new binary called ocamlrunx which= is a DT_NEEDED/LC_LOAD_DYLIB re-linking of ocamlrun against all the C libraries (ffi, SDL2* and their deps to= day) to get macOS and Linux bytecode working.

A Versatile OCaml Library for Git Interaction - Seeking Commun= ity Feedback

Archive: https://discuss.oca= ml.org/t/a-versatile-ocaml-library-for-git-interaction-seeking-community-fe= edback/14155/11

Continuing this thread, Mathieu Barbin announced

I've recently pushed updates to the vcs public repo with most of the contents of my early draft. For those interested in early experimentation, I've created a release on my= custom opam-repository.

The interface is still very a work in progress, but you can already see how= the pieces fit together. In particular, the provider componen= t, which is crucial for the dynamic dispatch implementation of vcs, is now available on opam. The vcs project serves as a good rea= l-world example of the capabilities this provides.




Please feel free to open issues on GitHub with general feedback, requests, =
or to start a discussion.



@kopecs, I don't have a precise timeline for an initial publication on opam=
 yet. I've created this
milestone if you=
'd like to follow the progress or leave a comment. Thank you for your
interest!



@paurkedal: Your setup has been a great source of inspiration for me, and I=
've found it incredibly helpful. Thank you so much!



@samoht: I chose the approach that felt most comfortable for this particula=
r project, but I greatly appreciate your input. I'll
definitely keep your suggestions in mind for future projects. Thanks!



Other OCaml News



From the ocaml.org blog


Here are links from many OCaml blogs aggregated at the ocaml.org blog.



My experience at IndiaFOSS 2023: Comm=
unity, Workshop, and Talks
Lean 4: When Sound Programs become a Choice





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