Am Samstag, den 10.12.2011, 17:32 -0300 schrieb Andrei Formiga: > On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Jonathan Protzenko > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > = Improving the community = > > > > I think the main point of the discussion is to improve "the community". If > > we really want to improve OCaml as a whole, then I think we can put our > > efforts on better areas than patching the compiler. > > > > == Package management system == > > > > The thing that's most needed is, imho, a package manager that works. > > Oasis-db looked very promising as far as I could tell, but Sylvain doesn't > > have as much time as he used to do. Instead of hacking on our pet projects > > (which is, I admit, very rewarding), maybe someone could step up and make > > Oasis-db happen. We don't have a single, unified answer to "what should I > > install to easily hack with OCaml?". What made Python, Perl, Haskell > > successful is the package management systems. How much longer are we going > > to shy away from this issue? Sure, it's much more fun to hack on the > > compiler. Not as useful. > > > > I think a good package system (with associated repository) and better > documentation are the two biggest things that can help OCaml's > adoption. It's true that there are languages that have become > successful without a package management system, but it has become > increasingly expected that languages have one. OCaml does not have > marketing or hype, so it has to win over new users by not creating > barriers to adoption. Plus it's much easier to work on a daily basis, > even for veterans. This is already true with GODI, which saves me a > lot of time when the library I need to install is available in its > repo. > > The question is: what should be done? What must be done to enable > OASIS-DB? Or should everyone adopt GODI? What's the situation between > these two systems? Maybe having some kind of rough roadmap would help > there.
The plan is that OASIS-DB exports its packages in a format that is understood by GODI. OASIS-DB would then appear as a second source for packages. For users there would be practically no difference - godi_console just fetches packages from a second site, too. For package developers this will mean that there is a choice. More complicated packages will probably remain native GODI ones (because of the unlimited scripting) whereas the average library will be well expressable in OASIS-DB. Gerd > Regarding documentation, this is a problem in many fronts, beginning > with the book situation. Practical OCaml was a good idea, badly > executed. And Jason Hicks' fine book is probably stuck in limbo > because of legal battles and so it never came out. I recently had a > look at the Go language from Google, and the "A Tour of Go" tutorial > is very good (at http://tour.golang.org/ ). Maybe something similar > for OCaml would be a nice addition, especially given that the OCaml > Tutorial is apparently MIA. But I think having a good package manager > should come first (btw, Go has one). > > > > -- > []s, Andrei Formiga > -- Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
