Am Freitag, den 25.04.2008, 18:59 +0200 schrieb Berke Durak: > > > On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Richard Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 10:53:36PM +0200, Berke Durak wrote: > > We absolutely need a standard serialization solution. > > > > I'm thinking of Sexplib of course but it could be another > one. The reason > > it must be standard is that it's difficult to provide > > serialization/deserialization functions outside the > imlementation. > > > It isn't though. There are several serialization modules > (sexplib, > deriving, ...), all of them are packaged up so using them is a > simple > 'apt-get' away. > > But we need at least to enrich standard container datatypes with > serialization functions... Do we want to have n copies of each > datatype > for each serialization library? I think we must agree on one such > solution > and ensure it is always available. > > As those solutions all involve syntax extensions, this means that it > must go > into the list of standard sytnax extensions. > > > > So Sexplib should be a standard extension, or better, it > should be included > > in the compiler and used for the .cmo/.cmi/.cmxa files. > > > Why? > > That would allow people to easily write tools that examine object > files without > relying on the unnecessarily britlle binary format.
You are very optimistic here. I'm a power user of a number of serializers (JSON, XDR, ICEP), and it is not the problem that one format is binary, and the other text, but that serialized representations are usually not self-describing. So even if you could simply read in a cmi into your program, the problem remains how to interpret it. You cannot overcome the dependency on a certain O'Caml version by switching to a text format. > At the very least you > could open it in a text editor and see if everything's OK inside, or > simply grep > it. You can do that already for cmi's. Just create a file "dummy.ml" with include Name_of_cmi in it and run "ocamlc -c -i dummy.ml" on it which prints the definitions of the cmi as readable text. Ok, there's more in it than only definitions, but the ocaml distribution includes a program called objinfo that allows you to inspect cmi's, cmo's and cma's, e.g. you can view the MD5 sums. > Yes, there is CMI grep, but that one would be even better. Do this, > and > you will instantly see 10 to 20 new metatools for Ocaml. Which tools for example? Gerd -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de Phone: +49-6151-153855 Fax: +49-6151-997714 ------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management: http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
