Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/03/2009 04:05 PM, Edgar Friendly: 8) Other (please explain) Some hints (I just saw it in my INBOX, I dont agree nor disagree): http://www.itworld.com/open-source/78643/how-attract-more-people-your-open-source-project -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
You seem to have a pretty nice list of packages on windows^Wmingw. :) Reason #1 could also be solved by publishing your patches and having them merged upstream. ;-) From what you said, your patches won't be very clean and won't be mergeable in their current state (hardcoding paths, I've been there too) but they would at least show where the problems are and that's maybe the biggest part of the work. Please share them if you can. --- Adrien Nader On 06/09/2009, dmitry grebeniuk gds...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/5 David Allsopp dra-n...@metastack.com: I'm not sure that one is allowed to redistribute the Microsoft C compilers directly without a license, but packaging MSYS or the relevant parts of Cygwin along with OCaml and Batteries would create an installer somewhere between 150-300MB which compared to the 16GB of trial software I downloaded from the Microsoft website the other day is not that bad. That's what I'm doing for my local needs, approximately. First of all, I have an infrastructure to build so called packages. global configure script (allows to choose installation prefix, library paths), a lot of patches, platform-specific build scripts, some dependency-stuff. Patches allow me to hardcode paths in some places (ugly, but it works). I'm building it under platforms that are interesting for me, for now it's only mingw/win32 and ubuntu, maybe I'll build under freebsd later. I'm enjoying the pleasure of patching everything: for example, I made ocamlnet (fastcgi part) working on mingw. Packages are building and working both under mingw and linux. (working as far as I have tested -- using test targets when available, or using the library in my code). The selection of packages is incomplete, but that's the packages I'm using and its dependencies: camltemplate camlzip camomile cryptokit deriving extlib findlib json-static lablgtk2 lwt menhir objsize ocaml-bitstring ocaml-sqlite3 ocaml-ssl ocamlgraph ocamlnet omake ounit pa_do pa_safeuse pcre-ocaml sexplib type-conv ulex xmlm. (there are no batteries for now) Then, some revisions of my project become binary. I'm making 4 zip-archives under windows: 1. base installation of mingw, msys, tcl/tk, gtk+ in standard places (c:\mingw, etc), 2. archive that adds unpacked .tar.gz with mingw C libraries, 3. archive that contains compiled ocaml + findlib, 4. archive with other ocaml libraries. So, installing fresh ocaml and libraries under fresh win32 is just unpacking 4 zip-archives in c:\ , and adding something like call c:\ocaml\set-vars.bat or . c:/ocaml/set-vars.sh in build script. I don't distribute it mainly because of the following reasons. 1. License questions for binary builds. For my local needs I can do whatever I want, until it doesn't leave my host and nobody sees it. (so, guys, you haven't seen all what I've described before) 2. The complexity of building the system from sources under windows: approx 17 files to download, some of them you install, others you unpack (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, not very comfortable for windows). 3. I don't want to support cygwin (I'm even not installing it at all), and I don't support msvc and win64 architectures (I don't need it for now). Maybe the reason#1 can be solved by building ocaml compiler without my local patches and reading licenses carefully. ___ 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 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
(snip) Compare Python's actively developed cx_Oracle to OCaml's abandoned Oracaml. Or Python's excellent Matplotlib to OCaml's frankly crude Plplot, I tried to draw a graph with a legend today, very simple you might think, wait, Plplot doesn't even do that! It would be a very hard sell to my colleagues right now, regardless of the brilliance of type inference, pattern matching, etc... OCaml has much less people working on it. Colleges churn out C++ and Java-trained people. Python is very close to that. See how much less love Ruby gets because of its Smalltalkishness. OCaml needs more people. Where are the French, by the way? ;-) Henry ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/06/2009 11:47 AM, Henry Lenzi: OCaml has much less people working on it. Colleges churn out C++ and Java-trained people. Python is very close to that. May be, but not nough. I remember Nuxeo switch to Java a while ago. See how much less love Ruby gets because of its Smalltalkishness. OCaml needs more people. Where are the French, by the way? ;-) Coming soon... :-P -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On 6 Sep 2009, at 09:47, Henry Lenzi wrote: OCaml needs more people. Where are the French, by the way? ;-) That's an interesting question. I have a friend who is an astrophysicist at a French observatory. He and his colleagues use FORTRAN and more recently Python (which hands off its heavy numeric work to LAPACK and BLAS). OCaml is unheard of, yet it ought to be perfect for them. I have another friend at a large French consulting firm - they are all Java for new work, plus whatever legacy languages they have to maintain, and they've never heard of OCaml. Same is true in French investment banking. Which is all very strange, the French are well known for championing home-grown ideas over whatever Les Rosbifs are doing (esp. since OCaml is clearly the more elegant language!). Cheers, G ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
maybe its the wrong question. what about: how (ie in which projects, success-stories) do you use batteries? Philip On Thu, 2009-09-03 at 09:05 -0400, Edgar Friendly wrote: It seems like batteries' adoption isn't quite as thorough as expected. We in the batteries devel team would love to know why you don't use batteries. Here's some of our guesses: 1) I *do* use batteries 2) It's not 1.0 yet, I'll try it then 3) It makes my executables too big 4) It's too hard to install (dependencies, godi failures) 5) It's difficult to compile against 6) It doesn't work on my platform 7) It uses camlp4 8) Other (please explain) Respond in public if appropriate, respond directly to me if you want. Now's a good time to think about where batteries is going and how it's getting there. E ___ 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 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 10:47 AM, David Rajchenbach-Teller david.tel...@ens-lyon.org wrote: Yes, we need to work on the uninstallation in GODI. Do you have any suggestion to get me out of this state? (I can go and manually erase something, but I don't know what.) Alan ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 12:15 PM, David Rajchenbach-Teller david.tel...@ens-lyon.org wrote: I'd say ocamlfind remove batteries ocamlfind remove batteries_threads ocamlfind remove batteries_nothreads Thanks, it worked. (I had to specify -destdir but ocamlfind was kind enough to tell me to do it.) Alan ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
OCaml needs more people. Where are the French, by the way? ;-) They are loading Ariane rockets with ADA :-) ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Le 06 Sep 2009 10:52, Gaius Hammond a écrit: That's an interesting question. I have a friend who is an astrophysicist at a French observatory. He and his colleagues use FORTRAN and more recently Python (which hands off its heavy numeric work to LAPACK and BLAS). OCaml is unheard of, yet it ought to be perfect for them. I don't think the OCaml bindings for BLAS and LAPACK are close to the power and the ease of use of Numpy and Scipy. They provide all the facilities of Matlab with the power of a true programming language (even if I don't like Python). I would say there is a lot of of work to provide such a library with all the syntactic sugar needed to use it confortably but I'm sure that it would be really nice to have efficient and powerful matrix computation in a safe language. Cheers, Olivier ___ 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
RE: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Rakotomandimby Mihamina wrote: 09/04/2009 09:37 PM, Gaius Hammond: I am after a language that has the rapid-development of Python or Tcl but with type safety; OCaml is right now the best bet, but it is *very* rough around the edges. The way you install ActivePython is you download it and run the installer and a few minutes later you're ready to go with everything you need. I'm just reading the release notes for Batteries now and it starts, you will need a big long list of things. I must insist on the fact this is probably specific to some OS. On debian and Ubuntu, adding one line to sources.list and issuing one command line does the trick. That is easy, espacially for those already using them. Using a very simple analysis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems, 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a Linux-style package manager (very sad, but true). Therefore a one-click installer should be a higher priority than supporting package managers *if* you want wider adoption of the system at all. Many developers will be using Windows whether they want to or not (or OS X - though I apologise if OS X does in fact have a package manager; please subtract 4.59% the previous number if it does) because they'll be in companies whose IT infrastructure is Windows, even if they have a few *nix boxes in the machine room for those weird developers. I'm not sure that one is allowed to redistribute the Microsoft C compilers directly without a license, but packaging MSYS or the relevant parts of Cygwin along with OCaml and Batteries would create an installer somewhere between 150-300MB which compared to the 16GB of trial software I downloaded from the Microsoft website the other day is not that bad. You could even throw an editor in with it. Microsoft Installer is a command line compiler which reads text files so it can be targeted from make just like anything else and the script would pretty much only have to be written once and then someone would occasionally have to use a Windows box just to build it (and virtualisation means you can pretend that your Linux PC isn't even running Windows really). It would also not be too much work to have an MSVC version which simply explained that you must install the Windows SDK to get the C compiler (but, just like OCaml's own binary win32 files, you'd still get bytecode for nothing). Personally, I compile everything from sources with OCaml - but when I started out with it (as an undergraduate) I used the mingw installer from the OCaml website and was up and running in a matter of minutes. If I'd had multi-step instructions to deal with at that point, I'd have probably ended up sticking with Moscow ML! My point is that the one-click installer at the start of the process allowed me to get hooked and then later, when the benefits were very clear, I was happy to go down the slightly more complex route of doing it properly. So, for example, once our batteries-single-click-installer-beginners realise that OCaml is cool and they want to use other libraries and tools as well then they may well realise that Cygwin isn't that hard to install and so therefore GODI-on-Windows isn't really that scary and so they can get Batteries and lots of other goodies using that instead of the megalithic installer. Also personally, when I come across a piece of software that offers a live-CD or virtual appliance as a means of demonstration it makes me look elsewhere as to me it implies that installation and maintenance is so complicated that it's made the developers go to the trouble of building a demo PC (albeit virtual!) just to guarantee that it works properly first time... but that's probably just me. There's an old saying: If you can't beat them, join them. Standing ranting on a soap-box doesn't tend to achieve much... In vain hope of not starting a flame war, David (who, by the way, is a realist rather than a Microsoft-apologist) [1] 4 s.f. seems a tad optimistic on an estimate like that - but rounding to the more sensible 1 s.f. would mean 100% which might be considered as over-egging my point ;o) ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
5) It's difficult to compile against I tried to use it once but failed to find documentation on how to use it with OCamlMakefile. 8) Other (please explain) I'm still learning OCaml and I'm afraid that batteries, beeing both a library and sort of replacement for OCaml (replace compiler, toplevel...), would be too complex to comprehend. ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On 5 Sep 2009, at 10:44, David Allsopp wrote: Using a very simple analysis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems, 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a Linux-style package manager (very sad, but true). Therefore a one- click installer should be a higher priority than supporting package managers *if* you want wider adoption of the system at all. Many developers will be using Windows whether they want to or not (or OS X - though I apologise if OS X does in fact have a package manager; please subtract 4.59% the previous number if it does) because they'll be in companies whose IT infrastructure is Windows, even if they have a few *nix boxes in the machine room for those weird developers. I do most of my development on Solaris, we operate a variety of OSs in production including Solaris, various Linuxes, various Windows versions. To deploy Python code, I say to the sysadmins, can you drop ActivePython on these boxes and they do, it's a snap, and it all works the same everywhere. That is a big factor in language adoption. I think we can all agree that Perl and Java are horrible languages, but they're ubiquitous because of this. In my OCaml environment, Oracaml has to be built with SunStudio (because it links against C++ code, Oracle's OCCI libraries, compiled with SunStudio). Plplot has to be built with GCC. Pcre doesn't work with the Pcre library package from Blastwave (this is a repository of Solaris software a la GODI), you have to compile the C from source and forego the benefits of package management. Plplot isn't happy with OCaml 3.08 and Oracaml isn't happy with 3.11 (tho' this is fixable, it's a symptom of it being abandoned, do I dare rely on it for real work?). I could go on... For me the benefits of OCaml do outweigh these factors for my own use - that is code written by me for my own and my team's use on the main machine we share for our work. I can't even contemplate using OCaml to be deployed elsewhere in the organization - I'd have to become nearly a full time build engineer to support it! Also personally, when I come across a piece of software that offers a live-CD or virtual appliance as a means of demonstration it makes me look elsewhere as to me it implies that installation and maintenance is so complicated that it's made the developers go to the trouble of building a demo PC (albeit virtual!) just to guarantee that it works properly first time... but that's probably just me. No, you've hit the nail on the head here. Cheers, G ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Saturday 05 September 2009 10:44:58 David Allsopp wrote: Rakotomandimby Mihamina wrote: I must insist on the fact this is probably specific to some OS. On debian and Ubuntu, adding one line to sources.list and issuing one command line does the trick. That is easy, espacially for those already using them. Using a very simple analysis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems, 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a Linux-style package manager (very sad, but true). Therefore a one-click installer should be a higher priority than supporting package managers *if* you want wider adoption of the system at all. Many developers will be using Windows whether they want to or not (or OS X - though I apologise if OS X does in fact have a package manager; please subtract 4.59% the previous number if it does) because they'll be in companies whose IT infrastructure is Windows, even if they have a few *nix boxes in the machine room for those weird developers. You're quoting statistics that cover secretaries, housewives and teenage gamers and trying to apply them to OCaml programmers. Windows' market share among technical users and programmers is significantly smaller and among OCaml programmers is smaller still. For example, if you look at sales of technical software like ours or Mathematica, Windows has only ~60% market share. -- Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Saturday 05 September 2009 11:22:30 ri...@happyleptic.org wrote: Using a very simple analysis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems, 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a Linux-style package manager (very sad, but true). With OCaml you can distribute native code programs, so the installation problem is relevant only to programmers. Don't bank on it. We shipped a product called Presenta a few years ago that was written in OCaml and distributed as a native code executable for Linux. It was a complete disaster with 80% of users experiencing random segfaults and we canned the product and will never try to distribute compiled OCaml programs again. Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it offers so little binary compatibility between distros. Building upon a decent VM solves this problem and many others, of course, but Linux has none. -- Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/05/2009 03:03 PM, Jon Harrop:: Using a very simple analysis from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems, 97.14%[1] of the computers in the world run an OS which does not have a Linux-style package manager (very sad, but true). With OCaml you can distribute native code programs, so the installation problem is relevant only to programmers. Don't bank on it. We shipped a product called Presenta a few years ago that was written in OCaml and distributed as a native code executable for Linux. [...] Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it offers so little binary compatibility between distros. The same with Windows. Some executables are version-sticky. my really personnal opinion But if you really wanted to distribute for Linux, the least action is to provide: - a specfile for rpm packagin - a debian/ directory for debian likes That way, you'll get it right. /p For example http://dev.coova.org/svn/coova-chilli/ has. I think it's a good effort made. -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 10:44:58AM +0100, David Allsopp wrote: I'm not sure that one is allowed to redistribute the Microsoft C compilers directly without a license, but packaging MSYS or the relevant parts of Cygwin along with OCaml and Batteries would create an installer somewhere between 150-300MB which compared to the 16GB of trial software I downloaded from the Microsoft website the other day is not that bad. You could even throw an editor in with it. Microsoft Installer is a command line compiler which reads text files so it can be targeted from make just like anything else and the script would pretty much only have to be written once and then someone would occasionally have to use a Windows box just to build it (and virtualisation means you can pretend that your Linux PC isn't even running Windows really). It would also not be too much work to have an MSVC version which simply explained that you must install the Windows SDK to get the C compiler (but, just like OCaml's own binary win32 files, you'd still get bytecode for nothing). I don't think anyone's claiming it's not possible, just that no one has actually done the work or offered to keep making up to date releases. It's a big project, but not big compared to other OCaml projects out there, eg. Debian's OCaml project is far larger than is proposed for an Active OCaml Windows installer. For comparison, I reckon on spending about one day a month maintaining the Fedora OCaml packages. You just need to find some people who are technically competent on OCaml on Windows, yet haven't ditched Windows for Linux for some reason. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 01:03:28PM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote: Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it offers so little binary compatibility between distros. You probably want to use a commercial Linux distribution. Red Hat (as an example) *guarantee* perfect binary compatibility for the 7 - 10 year lifespan of a release of RHEL. By guarantee I mean any binary incompatibility is treated as a regression and fixed as a very high priority (just below security issues). We internally run source level tools to try to avoid releasing incompatible ABIs in the first place. Building upon a decent VM solves this problem and many others, of course, but Linux has none. Not sure what you mean by this. Linux was the first _PC_[1] OS to incorporate a hypervisor into the kernel (Xen or KVM depending on your interpretation of the words hypervisor and/or incorporate). With RHEL 6 we'll also be making the same ABI guarantees as above for KVM virtual machines. Rich. [1] VM/CMS and the rest was on mainframes, m'kay? -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Saturday 05 September 2009 13:02:10 Richard Jones wrote: On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 01:03:28PM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote: Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it offers so little binary compatibility between distros. You probably want to use a commercial Linux distribution. Red Hat (as an example) *guarantee* perfect binary compatibility for the 7 - 10 year lifespan of a release of RHEL. You mean sell only to RHEL users and not Linux users? Building upon a decent VM solves this problem and many others, of course, but Linux has none. Not sure what you mean by this. Linux was the first _PC_[1] OS to incorporate a hypervisor into the kernel (Xen or KVM depending on your interpretation of the words hypervisor and/or incorporate). I'm talking about user space VMs like the JVM and CLR and not OS kernel hypervisors. -- Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 01:08:32AM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote:
I would very much like to learn batteries and write OCaml Journal
articles about it. The main reason I have not is not just that it
has not reached 1.0 yet but that it is not a mere apt-get install
away for most users.
Uh? http://packages.debian.org/sid/libbatteries-ocaml-dev
--
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Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On 4 Sep 2009, at 01:08, Jon Harrop wrote: I would very much like to learn batteries and write OCaml Journal articles about it. The main reason I have not is not just that it has not reached 1.0 yet but that it is not a mere apt-get install away for most users. This (for example) is what other language communities count as batteries included: http://www.activestate.com/activepython/ No disrespect intended towards the Batteries guys, but if the goal is to encourage widespread adoption, that's what to aim for. Cheers, G ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Jean-Christophe Filliâtre a écrit : I like writing my own libraries when I need some. Unfortunately, many people do that. The problem with this approach (from a FOSS point of view) is with external contributors (who can fix bugs or develop features). A (big) project using non-standard libraries for things that do have a standard (imagine zlib and pcre in C) will attract less external contributors (it would deter me from contributing and therefore using, at least). Of course, things are easier with OCaml than with C, as you can learn or discover the usage of a library being guided just by the compiler error messages, but it become painful at some point. I appreciate the Batteries initiative which IIUC aims at providing standards (but I don't use it myself... yet). But I'd like to comment on: 3) It makes my executables too big I wouldn't say this is a problem of Batteries, but a problem of OCaml's lack of proper shared libraries. -- Stéphane ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Hi all, Le Thu, 3 Sep 2009 17:50:21 +0200 Tom Hutchinson thomas.hutchin...@sophia.inria.fr a écrit: I imagine there are a fair number of people who take parts bits and pieces out of the batteries sources and use those in their projects. I've seen this in too many OCaml projects indeed, and that approach has its own problems too. Fixes and improvements do not flow from one copy of the code to the other, codes eventually diverge and using the real library becomes harder as time goes on... This is a maintainance nightmare. Solutions should be found for each reason (development, deployment, performance,...) why OCaml libraries are not used like libraries, so that the incitive to go cuttingpasting disappears; because in my opinion it's terrible. I think a broad availability (either installed by default or at least *very* easy to install) on all supported platforms should be a start. As I understand Batteries is getting there. Best regards, Pierre. ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Pierre Etchemaite a écrit : I imagine there are a fair number of people who take parts bits and pieces out of the batteries sources and use those in their projects. I've seen this in too many OCaml projects indeed, and that approach has its own problems too. Fixes and improvements do not flow from one copy of the code to the other, codes eventually diverge and using the real library becomes harder as time goes on... This is a maintainance nightmare. [...] +1 I think a broad availability (either installed by default or at least *very* easy to install) on all supported platforms should be a start. As I understand Batteries is getting there. I would say it's software distributions' goal (GODI, Debian, etc.). Cheers, -- Stéphane ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Le 4 sept. 09 à 11:32, Stéphane Glondu a écrit : I think a broad availability (either installed by default or at least *very* easy to install) on all supported platforms should be a start. As I understand Batteries is getting there. I would say it's software distributions' goal (GODI, Debian, etc.). Installing a software distribution is a one more step in the install. If you want to reach the widest audience it should be self contained. A guy who wants to try batteries wants to try batteries i.e. he doesn't want to waste his time in installing batteries. An experienced guy will be ready to take this time but a beginner will very easily get discouraged. And even the experienced guy will be ready to take this time on the condition that he is quite confident that this will bring something to him. From reading this thread it does not seem to be the case yet. Anyway beginners are certainly *the* audience to reach since the earlier you are addicted the harder you are detoxified. Furthermore as shown by this thread, many experienced guys already have their own ways of doing things. My opinion: at the moment, wrapping (install, doc, faq, quickstarts, web site, advertisement) should be a priority over new features. -- Vincent Aravantinos PhD Student - LIG - CAPP Team Grenoble, France +33.6.11.23.34.72 vincent.aravanti...@imag.fr http://membres-lig.imag.fr/aravantinos/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
I would use batteries and would recommend it to my students if there were any chance they would succeed installing it. In other words, batteries is too hard to install. This may not be so on Linux, but what about Windows (99% of my students use Windows only)? By the way, my experience with students trying to install software (on WindowS) was that: a) Java is easy to install but is useless by itself b) Java + Textpad editor is hard to install because Java must be installed before Textpad c) Java + Eclipse is hard to install because Eclipse is scary d) Ocaml is very hard to install for a number of reasons e) Python is easy to install (assuming the use IDLE for editing) We switched to Pythong from Java a while ago. You can never overestimate how important trivialities such as ease of installation and natural-looking syntax (python's indentation) are to beginners. Andrej ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Edgar Friendly thelema...@gmail.com wrote: Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: Mike Lin wrote: Ditto, Due to the sparsity of OCaml's standard library, many long term users probably have their own library to do all sorts of little things they need, and substantial amounts of code written around it. :-( Double ditto. I have quite a large amount of stuff sitting on top of extlib/str/unix. Erik Would you consider donating any of it to batteries? 17) I don't want to use any library that will accept code from people like me. Grou^H^H^H^H Pascal___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
I like writing my own libraries when I need some. Unfortunately, many people do that. Why do you say unfortunately? What was important in my answer was not the words my own libraries but the words I like. And you cannot find unfortunate that some people like programming :-) (But, of course, if this is to recode an existing library without any pleasure, I agree with you.) -- Jean-Christophe ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 07:39:25AM +0100, Gaius Hammond wrote: On 4 Sep 2009, at 01:08, Jon Harrop wrote: I would very much like to learn batteries and write OCaml Journal articles about it. The main reason I have not is not just that it has not reached 1.0 yet but that it is not a mere apt-get install away for most users. This (for example) is what other language communities count as batteries included: http://www.activestate.com/activepython/ Which brings us back to the argument when Batteries was orginally proposed: For some reason, some users are unable to use 'apt-get', or the corresponding clicky interfaces. For those users, either they need to be taught how to use the clicky interfaces, or, if they are on certain OSes which lack packaging systems, one can provide a fat OCaml package with lots of libraries. However this problem is completely orthogonal to the problem of providing a core, consistent and standardized library. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:26:45PM +0200, Andrej Bauer wrote: I would use batteries and would recommend it to my students if there were any chance they would succeed installing it. In other words, batteries is too hard to install. This may not be so on Linux, but what about Windows (99% of my students use Windows only)? Give them a live CD. There are various online projects where you can create live CDs with a custom set of packages via a webpage.[1] A live CD is actually better than relying on them trying to install something under Windows, because you're guaranteeing a consistent environment. And you can provide them with customized bits too (like the coursework!) If you provide the live CD as both a physical CD and a downloadable ISO, they can even run it virtualized so they don't need to reboot. Rich. [1] Fedora's tool is command-line based: you can use 'appliance-creator' or 'livecd-creator'. http://thincrust.org/ace-examples.html -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/04/2009 01:26 PM, Andrej Bauer:: By the way, my experience with students trying to install software (on WindowS) was that: a) Java is easy to install but is useless by itself b) Java + Textpad editor is hard to install because Java must be installed before Textpad c) Java + Eclipse is hard to install because Eclipse is scary d) Ocaml is very hard to install for a number of reasons e) Python is easy to install (assuming the use IDLE for editing) http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/ocaml/ocaml-batteries-included http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/emacs-snapshot What else? :-P I love Fridays... -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
I just built one successfully using this: http://www.annexia.org/tmp/ocaml-f11.ks and: appliance-creator --name ocaml-f11 --config ocaml-f11.ks You'll probably want to use livecd-creator instead. qemu-kvm -snapshot -hda ocaml-f11-sda.raw -vnc :10 -m 512 (Root password is 'thincrust'). In the live CD case you give students either the ISO or bootable CD (or ISO and they can burn a bootable CD). The more knowledgeable ones can just boot the ISO directly in any VM. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 07:25:13AM -0700, Dario Teixeira wrote: Sure, your students may not be familiar with Linux, but you don't have to be a 1337 Hax0r to fire up a terminal and run apt-get install. Also almost any Linux distro can also do the equivalent of 'apt-get' through a pointy-clicky interface too, in case the command line is insurmountable. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/04/2009 09:37 PM, Gaius Hammond: I am after a language that has the rapid-development of Python or Tcl but with type safety; OCaml is right now the best bet, but it is *very* rough around the edges. The way you install ActivePython is you download it and run the installer and a few minutes later you're ready to go with everything you need. I'm just reading the release notes for Batteries now and it starts, you will need a big long list of things. I must insist on the fact this is probably specific to some OS. On debian and Ubuntu, adding one line to sources.list and issuing one command line does the trick. That is easy, espacially for those already using them. -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
09/03/2009 04:05 PM, Edgar Friendly:: It seems like batteries' adoption isn't quite as thorough as expected. From the end user point of view, things that might help in usage are: - package availability - For Dummy Documentation + examples. I hate to say that, but something like this: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php Is clear for many discovering users. With such a documentation, you are going to see many beginners using it, have questions traffic about it, and slowly go to the adoption of Batteries by everyone. -- Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat: Administration Systeme, Recherche Developpement +261 34 29 155 34 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Edgar Friendly thelema...@gmail.com wrote: 4) It's too hard to install (dependencies, godi failures) I installed it once (using godi), but when I tried to migrate to a newer version of ocaml, compilation fails. (It tells me it's already installed, but it seems that godi believes it's not.) I have not taken the time to look under the hood to find out what is wrong. Alan ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Hi, 3) It makes my executables too big (Assuming this [0] is still true) For me this is the biggest reason for not using batteries. I don't really have a need for small executables right now, but I would like to at least know that this issue will be resolved before I adopt batteries. [0] http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2008/11/24509ad16aae6d1cc2e15f532e0007eb.en.html ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Edgar, Le 3 sept. 09 à 15:05, Edgar Friendly a écrit : 2) It's not 1.0 yet, I'll try it then Overall impression that it is still a bit messy: - doc has broken links - interfaces lack homogeneity e.g. Hashtbl.mem takes the container first whereas Set.mem takes it second. In contrast I love the way Jane Street Core handles this: having a clear rule for all modules and using labels extensively. - when I gave it a try there were still compilation problems under OSX (so a bit of 4.) but it now seems to work. I am watching batteries regularly to see how things evolve. -- Vincent Aravantinos PhD Student - LIG - CAPP Team Grenoble, France +33.6.11.23.34.72 vincent.aravanti...@imag.fr http://membres-lig.imag.fr/aravantinos/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Hi, It seems like batteries' adoption isn't quite as thorough as expected. We in the batteries devel team would love to know why you don't use batteries. Here's some of our guesses: Batteries is a great project, and you guys shouldn't feel discouraged if it doesn't take over the world overnight. There's unfamiliarity and inertia to overcome, and that takes time. Personally, I've installed Batteries and played with it, but I'm not using it (yet) on my projects. Going back to your list, here's why: 2) It's not 1.0 yet, I'll try it then That's indeed a factor. 3) It makes my executables too big This used to be a bigger problem. Previous versions of Batteries would pack everything into a module, disabling the linker's ability to link only effectively used code. Thankfully newer versions are going towards a flatter hierarchy. 4) It's too hard to install (dependencies, godi failures) Never ran into this problem. 5) It's difficult to compile against Not an issue. 6) It doesn't work on my platform Not an issue. 7) It uses camlp4 Not an issue for me. There's this thing called a build system that should handle all that transparently, so I couldn't care less if it required carrier pigeons to compile my programs. But yes, I admit it may be an issue for more constrained platforms. 8) Other (please explain) a) Lack of exposure to the advantages of Batteries. It borrows lots of cool ideas from Haskell, but that may not be immediately apparent. You guys should take advantage of the Ocaml Planet to run a publicity campaign: you can make a number of tutorial posts showing the old way versus the Batteries way. There's more to Batteries than just a collection of APIs, and that message may not be getting through. b) I'm already using Extlib extensively, and that reduces the advantage for Batteries. (Same way the Minitel slowed down Internet adoption in France in the mid-nineties?) Best regards, Dario Teixeira ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
I have been planning to start using Batteries for several months, but here are some reasons I have not yet: - It did not compile under godi, but I haven't tried in a while. - The migration will require changes across our code base. It's hard to set aside the time for such an undertaking. - Core language features are altered. For example, the Batteries way is to use input's instead of in_channel's. Documentation explaining such changes would help. The API documentation is excellent, but what is missing is a book on An Introduction to OCaml with Batteries. Perhaps a well planned wiki would help get this started. - Some assurance that Batteries really will become the de facto standard would also help. Having said that, I'm switching to Batteries soon. Thanks for all the hard work! On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Edgar Friendly thelema...@gmail.com wrote: It seems like batteries' adoption isn't quite as thorough as expected. We in the batteries devel team would love to know why you don't use batteries. Here's some of our guesses: 1) I *do* use batteries 2) It's not 1.0 yet, I'll try it then 3) It makes my executables too big 4) It's too hard to install (dependencies, godi failures) 5) It's difficult to compile against 6) It doesn't work on my platform 7) It uses camlp4 8) Other (please explain) Respond in public if appropriate, respond directly to me if you want. Now's a good time to think about where batteries is going and how it's getting there. E ___ 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 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
8) Other (please explain) It's not part of the standard distribution. Using it in an open source project adds a lot of dependencies. I understand that the Batteries team doesn't decide what gets included in OCaml. Still, many projects are very hesitant to add extra dependencies (even if batteries was entirely self-contained). I imagine there are a fair number of people who take parts bits and pieces out of the batteries sources and use those in their projects. Tom Hutchinson ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 09:05:08AM -0400, Edgar Friendly wrote: 6) It doesn't work on my platform Last time I tried, I couldn't get it to compile. However it is on my to-do list to look again and try to package it for Fedora. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
(I do not want to derail this thread, just make a small clarification below) On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Jake Donhamj...@donham.org wrote: On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 6:05 AM, Edgar Friendly thelema...@gmail.com wrote: 8) Other (please explain) Please take this with the caveat that I have little experience with Batteries, but my impression (from following batteries-devel) is that it changes OCaml significantly with Camlp4 extensions, and that it is not possible to use Batteries without the language changes. If I am wrong on these points I would be glad to know it. This is, I think, a common and unfortunate misunderstanding with Batteries. In its current state (and likely in all future iterations), camlp4 extensions/syntax changes are _not_ required to use Batteries with your OCaml code. If you simply link with Batteries (ex. -package batteries using ocamlfind) then there will be no changes to the syntax. There are simple mechanisms to make use of the syntax extensions provided by Batteries, but they are not required for Batteries to work I think it is important for adoption of any new thing to give people a low-cost way to get started, and an incremental path towards using it fully and depending upon it. My impression is that with Batteries you must take or leave the whole thing. A full-featured de facto standard library for OCaml is a great idea, but it must be a *library*; you must be able to use only the parts you want to use. The easiest way to use Batteries is to take or leave the whole thing, but it is not the only way. Hopefully some more documentation, particularly in the form of tutorials for folks new to OCaml as well as Batteries, will help clarify what Batteries _always_ provides and what it _can_ provide when desired. Hope this helps, Hez -- Hezekiah M. Carty Graduate Research Assistant University of Maryland Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
8) Other (please explain) I like writing my own libraries when I need some. (But don't misread me: I don't see myself as a concurrent to Batteries, and I think you guys are doing a great job.) -- Jean-Christophe ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Ashish Agarwal agarwal1...@gmail.comwrote: - Core language features are altered. For example, the Batteries way is to use input's instead of in_channel's. Documentation explaining such changes would help. The API documentation is excellent, but what is missing is a book on An Introduction to OCaml with Batteries. Perhaps a well planned wiki would help get this started. There's a French version : http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Objective_Caml for which a translation had been started : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Objective_Caml but it isn't up-to-date at all, nor finished. Still, the missing thing is time... -- Alp Mestan http://blog.mestan.fr/ http://alp.developpez.com/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Great! I did not know this book was going to employ Batteries. That is a great step towards making Batteries the standard library. On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Alp Mestan a...@mestan.fr wrote: On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Ashish Agarwal agarwal1...@gmail.comwrote: - Core language features are altered. For example, the Batteries way is to use input's instead of in_channel's. Documentation explaining such changes would help. The API documentation is excellent, but what is missing is a book on An Introduction to OCaml with Batteries. Perhaps a well planned wiki would help get this started. There's a French version : http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Objective_Caml for which a translation had been started : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Objective_Caml but it isn't up-to-date at all, nor finished. Still, the missing thing is time... -- Alp Mestan http://blog.mestan.fr/ http://alp.developpez.com/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Hi I installed the Haskell Platform because there was a binary for win32, and didn't installed Ocaml Batteries for the same reason: You may download the source tarball from the Forge [1], read the on-line API documentation [2] or the extended release notes [3]. Cheers, Hugo On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Philippe Wang philippe.wang.li...@gmail.com wrote: I am not sure my answer is relevant, but here it is : The ratio (time needed to installlearnuse it) / (time saved) has to be interesting (close to zero). For me, at the moment, this ratio is close to infinite. However, I do hope to use it someday. Cheers, Philippe On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Edgar Friendly thelema...@gmail.com wrote: It seems like batteries' adoption isn't quite as thorough as expected. We in the batteries devel team would love to know why you don't use batteries. Here's some of our guesses: 1) I *do* use batteries 2) It's not 1.0 yet, I'll try it then 3) It makes my executables too big 4) It's too hard to install (dependencies, godi failures) 5) It's difficult to compile against 6) It doesn't work on my platform 7) It uses camlp4 8) Other (please explain) Respond in public if appropriate, respond directly to me if you want. Now's a good time to think about where batteries is going and how it's getting there. E ___ 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 ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Edgar Friendly wrote: 8) Other (please explain) I can not yet apt-get install it. The main systems where it batteries would be useful for me is on production code for Ubuntu 6.06 (legacy) and 8.04. I do have a laptop running 9.04 and will probably upgrade that to 9.10 in the near future. If batteries is available for 9.10 and I like it enough I will probably grab the 9.10 source package and backport it to 6.06 and 8.04 and then push it into our personalised Ubuntu package repository. The reliance Debian packages is do to our automation and QQ processes. All software that ends up on our kiosk-like devices start up as source code in subversion (not my first choice). We than have an autobuilder that pulls stuff out of SVN, builds the packages and sticks it in our own development repository. QA pulls built packages out of the devel repository and if they pass QA , push them to our production repository where they are pulled onto our kiosks (should be 1000 of these round the world by about March next year) in an automatic upgrade procedure. Erik -- -- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Mike Lin wrote: Ditto, Due to the sparsity of OCaml's standard library, many long term users probably have their own library to do all sorts of little things they need, and substantial amounts of code written around it. :-( Double ditto. I have quite a large amount of stuff sitting on top of extlib/str/unix. Erik -- -- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ ___ 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
Re: [Caml-list] Why don't you use batteries?
Hello Erik, 2009/9/4 Erik de Castro Lopo mle+oc...@mega-nerd.com: If batteries is available for 9.10 Batteries is available for 9.10: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=batteries and I like it enough I will probably grab the 9.10 source package and backport it to 6.06 and 8.04 and then push it into our personalised Ubuntu package repository. Here is the official Debian package used in Ubuntu: http://packages.qa.debian.org/o/ocaml-batteries.html Yours, d. PS: List of OCaml packages in Debian and Ubuntu: http://bentobako.org/ubuntu-ocaml-status/raw/compare-unstable-karmic.html ___ 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
