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

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

On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 04:38:15AM +1100, John Max Skaller wrote:
> >>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.
> 
> I think we should be careful here. 

Indeed. I actually now think that we should not rely on anything
the ocaml core team does not rely on. Under unix, that means
ocaml and make. If they don't need python to install the ocaml
libraries, we don't need it for ExtLib either.

So, my proposal would be like this: we create a `ocamlc -where`/extlib
directory, with extlib.cm* files in it. To use extlib, 
you need to compile with +extlib extlib.cma. (Please
forgive my unixisms; if something will not work under
Windows, please free to suggest alternatives that will).

Now, for the level of the library, what I see for the first
phase is (I think) very close to Stefano's:
We need things like String.of_char and List.rev_combine.
It seems to me that the simplest way to get them is by writing
.ml files like this string.ml:

   include String
   let of_char = String.make 1

and .mli files that replicate the string.mli from the stdlib and
add the extensions of extlib. Then we just pack everything in
extlib.cma. The ocaml team can decide to move things for stdlib
to extlib (or the other way round) as they wish.

> In my opinion Boost went entirely
> off the rails by chosing a special make tool, and then modifying
> that so that to actually build boost became a total nightmare.
> 
> They failed to follow my recommendation:-)
> 
> I recommended Python script as the build tool, and they
> thought it was 'too heavy' which of course turned out
> to be a joke compared to having to download and build
> a custom tool -- which needed constant modification.
> 
> I personally DESPISE make and friends, I think they're
> total garbage. While they automate some tasks nicely,
> trying to fool make into doing all the build/test/install
> tasks correctly requires considerably expertise and hackery.
> 
> Python, on the other hand, is a full scale programming language.
> 
> Well, we should probably use ocaml script instead :-)
> 
> -- 
> John Max Skaller, mailto:sk...@oz...