[cwn] Attn: Development Editor, Latest OCaml Weekly News
Alan Schmitt
alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org
Tue Feb 19 02:17:19 PST 2019
Hello
Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of February 12
to 19,
2019.
Table of Contents
─────────────────
ReasonableCoding: a live-stream showcasing Reason/OCaml
Dune 1.7.0
Previous discussions on namespaces?
Other OCaml News
Old CWN
ReasonableCoding: a live-stream showcasing Reason/OCaml
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Archive:
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-reasonablecoding-a-live-stream-showcasing-reason-ocaml/3348/1>
ostera announced
────────────────
For about 2 months I've been running a live-stream on Twitch
called
[ReasonableCoding]. You can pick it up live on Twitch, and
[subscribe
to upcoming events here], but all the past episodes are
available on a
YouTube channel of the same name: [ReasonableCoding]
<https://discourse-cdn-sjc2.com/standard11/uploads/ocaml/original/2X/f/ffbe3205511d399ab8017d98d8dcb984ac5cf678.jpeg>
In the episodes, I've explored topics in software development:
http
servers, profiling code, async/parallel programming, unit
testing,
property-based testing, command line tools, esy, graphql
servers, how
does the OCaml garbage collector work, etc.
While it is not exclusively aimed at Reason/OCaml, they are the
languages I'm using on a daily basis and thus most of the
episodes
feature them or libraries in the Reason/OCaml ecosystem.
[ReasonableCoding] <https://twitch.tv/ostera>
[subscribe to upcoming events here]
<https://www.twitch.tv/ostera/events>
[ReasonableCoding] <http://λ.tv>
What does it look like?
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌
The format tends to be quite raw and straightforward, albeit the
stream taking, normally, over 2 hours:
1. Set up a context / state a problem
2. Work on it live
Sometimes includes digging deep into a library, like `lwt', and
just
making sense of the whole thing. It may include drawings.
It is quite raw in the sense that there is no language
censoring,
there's a lot of "how did this work?" followed up by unearthing
sources and reading through documentation, and quite a few a-ha
moments as well.
If you can join, there's a bunch of interaction with the
audience
(albeit I could improve my setup!), and users like @anmonteiro,
@ulrikstrid, @p1xelHer0, @andreypopp and @thangngoc89 have made
very
impactful suggestions and comments, and ultimately have helped
me out
a lot during them.
I think you would enjoy it too :slight_smile:
Content
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌
Find below a list of the episodes so far (date of this edit)
uploaded
to YouTube.
◊ Season 0
• RC002 — Understanding Library Packaging in Sketch.sh
• RC003 — Parallelizing the Buildgraph Execution in Cactus (Part
I)
• RC004 — Parallelizing the Buildgraph Execution in Cactus (Part
II)
• RC005 — Adding Templates to Cactus
• RC007 — Helping Sketch.sh Packaging Libraries
• RC008 — Async and Parallel Programming with Reason
• RC009 — Making Command Line Tools with Cmdliner
◊ Season 1
• RC010 — Serving Static Files with `http/af'
• RC011 — A Twitch.tv Command Line Interface
• RC012 — Native GraphQL APIs
• RC013 — Property-based Testing with `qcheck'
• RC014 — Profiling Reason Native with `landmarks'
• RC015 — A GraphQL Testing Server
• RC016 — `lwt' from the Inside Out
• RC017 — Reason Native with `esy'
• RC018 — A GraphQL API in Erlang
• RC019 — Building Design Systems with ReasonML (Part I)
◊ Season 2
• RC020 — Understanding the Reason Native Garbage Collector
(Part I)
• RC021 — Exploring Algebraic Effects in Eff
• RC022 — Exploring the Actor-model in PonyLang
• RC022 — Building Design Systems with ReasonML (Part II)
Hope you enjoy it and feedback appreciated :smile:
Dune 1.7.0
══════════
Archive: <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-dune-1-7-0/3339/1>
Rudi Grinberg announced
───────────────────────
On behalf of the dune team, I'm pleased to announce the release
of
dune 1.7.0. This release is the biggest release since 1.0 and
I'm
excited to present it to you. The change log is quite long so
I'll
summarize the most noteworthy changes:
• The jbuilder binary and jbuild files are officially
deprecated. But
not to worry, we've created a `$ dune upgrade' command to do
the
hard work for you.
• The virtual libraries feature has made it to 1.7.0. I've
blogged
about it [before]
• There's now a [mode] to disable transitive dependencies. This
mode
still has some caveats because it lacks proper compiler
support. But
we welcome user reports regarding its usability.
• Dune now has a `--trace-file' to profile slow builds using
shiny
flame graphs in Chrome.
As usual, the (exceedingly long) change list is available for
your
convenience:
[before] <http://rgrinberg.com/posts/virtual-libraries/>
[mode]
<https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/latest/advanced-topics.html#implicit-transitive-deps>
1.7.0 (12/02/2010)
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌
• Second step of the deprecation of jbuilder: the `jbuilder'
binary
now emits a warning on every startup and both `jbuilder' and
`dune'
emit warnings when encountering `jbuild' files (#1752, @diml)
• Change the layout of build artifacts inside _build. The new
layout
enables optimizations that depend on the presence of `.cmx'
files of
private modules (#1676, @bobot)
• Fix merlin handling of private module visibility (#1653
@bobot)
• unstable-fmt: use boxes to wrap some lists (#1608, fix #1153,
@emillon, thanks to @rgrinberg)
• skip directories when looking up programs in the PATH (#1628,
fixes
#1616, @diml)
• Use `lsof' on macOS to implement `--stats' (#1636, fixes
#1634,
@xclerc)
• Generate `dune-package' files for every package. These files
are
installed and read instead of `META' files whenever they are
available (#1329, @rgrinberg)
• Fix preprocessing for libraries with `(include_subdirs ..)'
(#1624,
fix #1626, @nojb, @rgrinberg)
• Do not generate targets for archive that don't match the
`modes'
field. (#1632, fix #1617, @rgrinberg)
• When executing actions, open files lazily and close them as
soon as
possible in order to reduce the maximum number of file
descriptors
opened by Dune (#1635, #1643, fixes #1633, @jonludlam,
@rgrinberg,
@diml)
• Reimplement the core of Dune using a new generic memoization
system
(#1489, @rudihorn, @diml)
• Replace the broken cycle detection algorithm by a state of the
art
one from [this paper] (#1489, @rudihorn)
• Get the correct environment node for multi project workspaces
(#1648, @rgrinberg)
• Add `dune compute' to call internal memoized functions (#1528,
@rudihorn, @diml)
• Add `--trace-file' option to trace dune internals (#1639, fix
#1180,
@emillon)
• Add `--no-print-directory' (borrowed from GNU make) to
suppress
`Entering directory' messages. (#1668, @dra27)
• Remove `--stats' and track fd usage in `--trace-file' (#1667,
@emillon)
• Add virtual libraries feature and enable it by default (#1430
fixes
#921, @rgrinberg)
• Fix handling of Control+C in watch mode (#1678, fixes #1671,
@diml)
• Look for jsoo runtime in the same dir as the `js_of_ocaml'
binary
when the ocamlfind package is not available (#1467, @nojb)
• Make the `seq' package available for OCaml >= 4.07 (#1714,
@rgrinberg)
• Add locations to error messages where a rule fails to generate
targets and rules that require files outside the build/source
directory. (#1708, fixes #848, @rgrinberg)
• Let `Configurator' handle `sizeof' (in addition to negative
numbers). (#1726, fixes #1723, @Chris00)
• Fix an issue causing menhir generated parsers to fail to build
in
some cases. The fix is to systematically use `-short-paths'
when
calling `ocamlc -i' (#1743, fix #1504, @diml)
• Never raise when printing located errors. The code that would
print
the location excerpts was prone to raising. (#1744, fix #1736,
@rgrinberg)
• Add a `dune upgrade' command for upgrading jbuilder projects
to Dune
(#1749, @diml)
• When automatically creating a `dune-project' file, insert the
detected name in it (#1749, @diml)
• Add `(implicit_transitive_deps <bool>)' mode to dune projects.
When
this mode is turned off, transitive dependencies are not
accessible. Only listed dependencies are directly
accessible. (#1734, #430, @rgrinberg, @hnrgrgr)
• Add `toplevel' stanza. This stanza is used to define toplevels
with
libraries already preloaded. (#1713, @rgrinberg)
• Generate `.merlin' files that account for normal preprocessors
defined using a subset of the `action' language. (#1768,
@rgrinberg)
• Emit `(orig_src_dir <path>)' metadata in `dune-package' for
dune
packages built with `--store-orig-source-dir' command line
flag
(also controlled by `DUNE_STORE_ORIG_SOURCE_DIR' env
variable). This
is later used to generate `.merlin' with `S'-directives
pointed to
original source locations and thus allowing merlin to see
those. (#1750, @andreypopp)
• Improve the behavior of `dune promote' when the files to be
promoted
have been deleted. (#1775, fixes #1772, @diml)
• unstable-fmt: preserve comments (#1766, @emillon)
• Pass flags correctly when using `staged_pps' (#1779, fixes
#1774,
@diml)
• Fix an issue with the use of `(mode promote)' in the menhir
stanza. It was previously causing intermediate *mock* files to
be
promoted (#1783, fixes #1781, @diml)
• unstable-fmt: ignore files using OCaml syntax (#1784,
@emillon)
• Configurator: Add `which' function to replace the `which'
command
line utility in a cross platform way. (#1773, fixes #1705,
@Chris00)
• Make configurator append paths to `$PKG_CONFIG_PATH' on
macOS. Previously it was prepending paths and thus
`$PKG_CONFIG_PATH' set by users could have been overridden by
homebrew installed libraries (#1785, @andreypopp)
• Disallow c/cxx sources that share an object file in the same
stubs
archive. This means that `foo.c' and `foo.cpp' can no longer
exist
in the same library. (#1788, @rgrinberg)
• Forbid use of `%{targets}' (or `${@}' in jbuild files) inside
preprocessing actions (#1812, fixes #1811, @diml)
• Add `DUNE_PROFILE' environment variable to easily set the
profile. (#1806, @rgrinberg)
• Deprecate the undocumented `(no_keep_locs)' field. It was only
necessary until virtual libraries were supported (#1822, fix
#1816,
@diml)
• Rename `unstable-fmt' to `format-dune-file' and remove its
`--inplace' option. (#1821, @emillon).
• Autoformatting: `(using fmt 1.1)' will also format dune files
(#1821, @emillon).
• Autoformatting: record dependencies on `.ocamlformat-ignore'
files
(#1824, fixes #1793, @emillon)
[this paper] <https://doi.org/10.1145/2756553>
Previous discussions on namespaces?
═══════════════════════════════════
Archive:
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/previous-discussions-on-namespaces/3318/1>
theindigamer asked
──────────────────
So far, I know of three proposals to add namespaces to OCaml
1. [Namespaces for OCaml: a proposal]
2. [A Proposal for Non-Intrusive Namespaces in OCaml]
3. [lpw25/namespaces]
My guess is that these have been discussed in some venues
(especially
the papers) but didn't make the cut, and there have been other
changes
which help avoid the naming problem to an extent. Can someone
provide
links to previous discussions on these proposals?
I've looked at Github and this forum but couldn't find anything
relevant. I looked at Mantis and found this [ticket] which is
somewhat
relevant but there isn't a solid discussion on any proposal per
se.
To be clear, this post is _not_ meant to stir up a discussion on
whether namespaces are a good idea or not or discuss the
proposals
themselves.
[Namespaces for OCaml: a proposal]
<http://gallium.inria.fr/~scherer/namespaces/spec.pdf>
[A Proposal for Non-Intrusive Namespaces in OCaml]
<https://ocaml.org/meetings/ocaml/2014/ocaml2014_8.pdf>
[lpw25/namespaces] <https://github.com/lpw25/namespaces>
[ticket] <https://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4679>
gasche replied
──────────────
"Other changes which help avoid the naming problem to an extent"
are
module aliases, namely the special treatment of the `module Foo
= Bar'
construct (when `Bar' is a module path and not something more
complex), changed in 4.02 to not introduce a hard dependency on
`Bar'
– when the `-no-alias-deps' flag is active. This lets user
manually
write "namespace maps" which send short module names to longer
conflict-avoiding names. Then `-open Foo' as a command-line
argument
was added to avoid having to manually open these namespace maps
at the
beginning of all the files of your project.
This is described in the following blog post from 2014 (before
`-open'): [Better namespaces through module aliases].
There were a lot of discussions about namespaces in 2012. I took
the
liberty to [upload some short proposals] that were made at the
time by
Alain Frisch, Martin Jambon, Nicolas Pouillard and Fabrice Le
Fessant. At the time I wrote a [synthesis] (which drew laughs
for
being longer than the concatenation of the documents it
synthesizes)
which was the basis for the specification in your document 1
above
(after more discussions with Nicolas Pouillard and Didier Rémy).
[Better namespaces through module aliases]
<https://blog.janestreet.com/better-namespaces-through-module-aliases/>
[upload some short proposals]
<http://gallium.inria.fr/~scherer/doc/ocaml-namespace-archeology/other-proposals/>
[synthesis]
<http://gallium.inria.fr/~scherer/doc/ocaml-namespace-archeology/namespaces-synthesis-archive.txt>
Yawar Amin also replied
───────────────────────
I think another thing that took some pressure and urgency off
implementing namespaces at the language level was jbuilder (and
now
Dune)'s built-in support for 'fake' namespaces using
autogenerated
module aliases. We can consider it now as the de-facto standard
namespacing mechanism for OCaml.
Other OCaml News
════════════════
From the ocamlcore planet blog
──────────────────────────────
Here are links from many OCaml blogs aggregated at [OCaml
Planet].
• [Senior Haskell / Full Stack Developer at PRODA Ltd
(Full-time)]
• [Full Stack Software Engineer (Haskell experience preferred)
at
Interos Solutions (Full-time)]
• [Formal proof and analysis of an incremental cycle detection
algorithm]
[OCaml Planet] <http://ocaml.org/community/planet/>
[Senior Haskell / Full Stack Developer at PRODA Ltd (Full-time)]
<https://functionaljobs.com/jobs/9145-senior-haskell-full-stack-developer-at-proda-ltd>
[Full Stack Software Engineer (Haskell experience preferred) at
Interos
Solutions (Full-time)]
<https://functionaljobs.com/jobs/9143-full-stack-software-engineer-haskell-experience-preferred-at-interos-solutions>
[Formal proof and analysis of an incremental cycle detection
algorithm]
<http://gallium.inria.fr/blog/incremental-cycle-detection>
Old CWN
═══════
If you happen to miss a CWN, you can [send me a message] and
I'll mail
it to you, or go take a look at [the archive] or the [RSS feed
of the
archives].
If you also wish to receive it every week by mail, you may
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[online].
[Alan Schmitt]
[send me a message] <mailto:alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org>
[the archive] <http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/>
[RSS feed of the archives]
<http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/cwn.rss>
[online] <http://lists.idyll.org/listinfo/caml-news-weekly/>
[Alan Schmitt] <http://alan.petitepomme.net/>
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