Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Ocaml indent?

[Manos R. <er...@cs...>]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 10:34:07PM +0100, Maxence Guesdon wrote:
> > Make some incredibly minimum directory layout suggestions and minimal 
> > project documentation (something like text file called "description.txt" in 
> > the root of each module).  Then get a ton of code up there.  Deal with the 
> > consequences later.  The number of community projects with intricate and 
> > beautiful submission specifications and no useful code or users far 
> > outweighs the number of useful projects bogged down by bad indentation and 
> > planning.
> 
> I don't think uploading a ton of code and deal with consequences
> *later* is the easy way : someone will have to sort the functions, and
> try to give some consistency for the functions of a module. This can
> be very difficult when it means finding the good functions among
> hundreds.
> 
> What about this other way : let's find some topics for modules
> (strings, lists, ...), then for each topic ask everyone what functions
> are missing and useful, then upload them or code them. Otherwise, I'm
> afraid the mess in the libraries will result in mess in programs using
> them.

A lot of ideas for different projects have been going around. It seems
different people are looking for
a) a shadow of the standard library, with extensions, such as
   tail-recursive versions of all the List functions (where it's possible).
b) a general repository of libraries, like the Humps, but including 
   code in library form (as opposed to finished programs), and actually
   storing the code (as opposed to just pointing to it, as in the
   humps).
c) An shared project to develop new libraries for Ocaml, as the need
   rises.
   
It seems to me that the priority is the shadow of the standard library.
For that, we already have a decomposition to follow, that of the
standard library itself.  We need a name, a license, a compilation
strategy, and an installation strategy.

For the name, somebody mentioned ExtLib. For the license, the argument
has been made that we would be extending the standard library, and it
would be much simpler to keep its license.  The obvious choices for the 
latter two are OCamlMakefile and findlib.

To proceed, I suppose we could all upload our proposals for extensions to
the StdLib modules, and vote about the appropriateness of each one.
(I have no experience with distributed development, so I have no idea
about the actual workings of this, but the Boost's guidelines can serve
a starting point.)

-- Manos