Am Freitag, den 16.12.2011, 13:39 +0100 schrieb Alain Frisch: > 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"!
Simple answer: There is a bootstrap problem: The existing Ocaml users are almost Unix-only. They do not care about Windows. In order to establish "Windows-typical problem solving" you need definitely more Windows users, but they will only come if you have a Windows-typical way of distribution. My thinking is that you can break this circle only if you go forward and try to make as many Unix-style solutions available under Windows as possible. Once there is a Windows community you can address it differently, but for the time being I don't see a good alternative. By the way, your plan includes Unix emulation, too, under point 3. It's only more hidden. Gerd > > 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 > -- 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
