[cwn] Attn: Development Editor, Latest OCaml Weekly News

Tue Dec 13 00:26:07 PST 2016

Hello,

Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of December 06 to 13, 2016.

1) OASIS v0.4.8
2) Web technologies as graphical user interface to OCaml programs?
3) Other OCaml News

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1) OASIS v0.4.8
Archive: <https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2016-12/msg00034.html>
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** Sylvain Le Gall announced:

I have just released OASIS 0.4.8.

OASIS is a tool to help OCaml developers to integrate configure, build and 
install systems in their projects. It should help to create standard entry 
points in the source code build system, allowing external tools to analyse 
projects easily.

Here is a quick summary of the important changes:
* Fix various problems of parsing present in OASIS 0.4.7 (extraneous
whitespaces, handling of ocamlbuild argument...)
* Enable creation of OASIS plugin and OASIS command line plugin.
* Various fixes for the plugin "omake".
* Create 2 branches to pin OASIS with OPAM, making easier for contributor to
test dev. version.

Full blog post:
<http://le-gall.net/sylvain+violaine/blog/index.php?post/2016/12/06/Release-of-OASIS-0.4.8>

Download here:
<https://forge.ocamlcore.org/frs/?group_id=54&release_id=1247>

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2) Web technologies as graphical user interface to OCaml programs?
Archive: <https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2016-12/msg00037.html>
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** Matthieu Dubuget asked:

I wonder how I could use Web technologies to write OCaml program's
GUI.

I?m particularly interested by the ocaml-vdom (elm) approach
simplicity.

But my need would be to add a user interface to programs using some
OCaml libraries which are not supported by js_of_ocaml (Unix, C libs
bindings?).

One solution would be to keep the GUI-less native OCaml apps compiled
and running as native code, and have them communicate with GUIs that
would run in browsers.

I'm not sure how this communication would be done, thought? Maybe websocket,
but this is something I do not know at all?

Another solution would be to have the native OCaml app directly serve
it's UI, maybe using ocsigenserver?

I'm wondering if there are some examples around with those kind of
approaches or other kind of solution?

** Sébastien Ferré replied:

I recently converted an application with lablgtk2-based GUI to
a web-based GUI. The body of the application has been transformed
into an XML HTTP server using ocamlnet, and the GUI has been
re-implemented using js-of-ocaml.

See <http://www.irisa.fr/LIS/softwares/sewelis> for description of the app, and
access to open source.
See <http://www.irisa.fr/LIS/ferre/sewelis-servolis/index.html> for the online Web
application.

Don't have time right now to expand, but I am very happy of the move.

** Vincent Balat also replied:

This is precisely what Eliom is intended for. Eliom is the simplest way to
program client-server applications with an interface in a browser. The program
is written as a single code, with parts of the code being executed server-side
and other client-side. Communication between client and server is
straightforward (e.g. just call a server side function from the client).

You can now also derive the mobile app for Android and iOS from the exact same
code.

Have a look at <http://ocsigen.org/tuto/dev/manual/start> for how to create very
quickly a template application with code examples. (You will need to pin the dev
version of all packages ? ocsigen-toolkit, ocsigen-start ... ? as I think they
are still not in opam, but they will be released in very few days/hours).

For an example of running app using this have a look a <http://www.besport.com> or
the corresponding mobile apps:
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.besport.www.mobile> 
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/besport/id1104216922>

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3) Other OCaml News
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** From the ocamlcore planet blog:

Here are links from many OCaml blogs aggregated at OCaml Planet,
<http://ocaml.org/community/planet/>.

Eliom 6.0: mobile and Web apps in OCaml
 <https://ocsigen.github.io/blog/2016/12/12/eliom6/>

Migration to Github
 <http://forge.ocamlcore.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=948>

Migration to Github
 <http://forge.ocamlcore.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=949>

AFL merged!
 <https://ocaml.io/w/Blog:News/AFL_merged!>

Coq 8.6 rc 1 is out
 <https://coq.inria.fr/news/133.html>

OASIS v0.4.8 release
 <http://forge.ocamlcore.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=947>

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