> I suspect that all the OCaml-on-Windows enthusiasts find their needs met > by F#. Maybe interoperability between OCaml and F# is the way to go on > Windows.
f# is not compatible enough to do this (e.g. missing objects and polymorphic variants). I was already thinking a bit about this, e.g. whether it would make sense to port Ocamlnet to f#. As it is already ported to win32 in general, this should not be too difficult regarding the OS-level functionality, but the said language incompatibilities make it essentially impossible. Gerd > > Gaius > > > > ------------------ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Alain Frisch <[email protected]> > Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:51:07 > To: Martin DeMello<[email protected]> > Cc: Gerd Stolpmann<[email protected]>; Jonathan > Protzenko<[email protected]>; <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions > > On 12/13/2011 09:21 AM, Martin DeMello wrote: >> it's a bit frustrating for me because i don't have or >> use windows either, but if i develop an end user app i really want it >> to be as cross-platform as possible. > > This attitude partially explains why support for OCaml under Windows > lacks behind: people want it to work, because they somehow have to > produce applications running under Windows, but they really don't like > this OS and certainly don't want to invest time in learning its gory > details in order to improve the situation with OCaml. I don't blame > anyone here, and I'd probably avoid developing under Windows myself if > this was not mandatory for our business. From what I hear, this is also > the case for other industrial users of OCaml who needs Windows support. > (And also for large projects like Coq, etc.) > > There are a few talented OCaml enthusiasts who know quite a lot about > Windows and have put some energy in improving OCaml for this OS in the > past. Thanks to them! > > As Xavier said, it would be great to find someone who'd like to join the > core dev team in order to improve support for Windows. Anyone interested? > > But in order to get really good support in the long term, which includes > community tools (packaging, porting libraries, support for Windows API > and .Net, documentation, etc), I think we need to find a way to > "bootstrap" a larger community of OCaml hobbyists, who consider Windows > as their main platform. (It might be the case that "native Windows > users" are culturally less inclined to participate to an open source > project, but I don't believe this is the primary explanation for the > lack of community work for Windows. We simply need more people on board.) > > Good support for OCaml under Windows would benefits not only to Windows > users, as it might simply attract a lot more people to OCaml and it > would probably make the life easier to those who are "forced" to produce > Windows applications. So this questions should be of interest to the > community as a whole. > > Do you guys have ideas on how to bootstrap a larger community of > OCaml/Windows hobbyists? > > > Alain > > -- > 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 > > -- Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany [email protected] Creator of GODI and camlcity.org. Contact details: http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html Company homepage: http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de *** Searching for new projects! Need consulting for system *** programming in Ocaml? Gerd Stolpmann can help you. -- 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
