Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Future of ExtLib

[Brian H. <bh...@sp...>]

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 syl...@po... wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Even if i am not an Extlib developper, i permit myself to raise my
> voice... Sorry if you don't agree.

IMHO, If you're an Extlib user, you have the right to a voice here.

> 
> I think extlib is a great project by the 100% Pure Ocaml coding style. I
> think putting 1 byte of C in it is not a good idea. It will break a lot
> of things, need to be maintained over a lot of arch ( including Ms Win,
> Linux, Unix, Irix et al ). I think it is far too complicated to be
> interessant.

Actually, writting portable C isn't the problem.  I routinely write C code 
which is much more widely portable than Ocaml is.  

But the more I think about it, the more I think linking to external 
libraries has other problems.  For example, zlib and gmp both are 
standard installs on Linux systems.  They both exist for Windows, but are 
not part of the standard installs.  So now, to use extlib on windows, you 
now not only need to get ocaml and extlib, but also zlib and gmp.  Plus, 
the code I'm thinking of grabbing for symmetric key crypto aren't 
standardly packaged in any library I'm aware of.  How we connect to this 
code is almost irrelevent, the code still needs to be there.

-- 
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Brian