On 12/14/2011 06:36 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
I know, and this makes me quite optimistic that it is not that hard to
develop standalone executables for the frequently used Unix utilities.
It's amazing how a discussion about simplifying the life for Windows
users ends up with "let's emulate Unix under Windows"!
A few points:
1. It would be useful to have a completely standalone binary
distribution of ocaml (with ocamlopt) under Windows. This can be
achieved either with little development efforts by extracting the
minimal needed subset of an mingw toolchain (an assembler, a linker,
some libraries and object files to link the main program); or with a
little bit more effort, by avoiding the need for an external toolchain
altogether. I insist: most users of OCaml under Windows won't need a C
compiler or Unix-like tools.
2. Binary packages for OCaml libraries could be simple .zip files to be
extracted at a precise place (under the hierarchy created by the OCaml
binary installer itself); or maybe even Windows installers. If
installing a library only amounts to clicking on a link in a web page
and run the installer, it already makes the life of the casual user much
easier. We don't necessarily need a full-blown packaging system, with
dependency tracking, versioning, automatic download, etc.
3. Binary packages are not created by casual users. It's not crazy to
require, at least in the short term, a decent Unix-like environment
(which includes a C compiler) in order to compile the libraries and
create the binary packages. It would be nice to adapt all the OCaml
libraries around so that they don't rely on external Unix tools, but
this is simply not going to happen.
4. A small group of volunteers could identify the most important OCaml
libraries around, make sure they compile fine under Windows, submit
patches upstream if the build system needs to be adapted, and produce
binary packages for these libraries.
5. What is important now is not to provide the ultimate package
management system for OCaml under Windows. We should focus instead on
lowering the barrier for casual users, addressing justified complaints
from beginners, making it easy to use OCaml for simple native projects
under Windows or for porting OCaml applications developed initially for
Unix. My hope is that this will be enough to attract more "native"
Windows users into OCaml, and then we (or they) can start thinking about
more ambitious goals.
-- Alain
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