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

Tue Jul 9 05:53:16 PDT 2019

Hello

Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of July 02 to 
09,
2019.

Table of Contents
─────────────────

ppx_show: a show deriver based of ppxlib (works on 4.08.0)
Library for GUI?
XMPP room (muc) for OCaml
obus 1.2.0
PSA: ocaml/opam2 docker images updated to 4.08.0 release
Other OCaml News
Old CWN

ppx_show: a show deriver based of ppxlib (works on 4.08.0)
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-ppx-show-a-show-deriver-based-of-ppxlib-works-on-4-08-0/4026/1>

Thierry Martinez announced
──────────────────────────

  I am pleased to announce that `ppx_show' is now available in
  opam. `ppx_show' reimplements the `show' plugin provided by
  [`ppx_deriving'] as a [`ppxlib'] plugin. In particular, 
  `ppx_show' is
  available with OCaml 4.08.0 (and is available on all OCaml 
  versions
  compatible with `ppxlib', starting from 4.04.1).

  <https://gitlab.inria.fr/tmartine/ppx_show/>

  See @arbipher's [related question].

[`ppx_deriving'] <https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ppx_deriving>

[`ppxlib'] <https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ppxlib>

[related question]
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/is-there-plugin-show-based-on-ppxlib-deriving/3080/2>

Library for GUI?
════════════════

  Archive: <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/library-for-gui/648/45>

Deep in this thread, sanette announced
──────────────────────────────────────

  In the last few years I have been developing a GUI for (and in) 
  ocaml,
  as a hobby project.  Finally, I have made the current state of 
  this
  thing (called "*bogue*") available on github, see

  [https://github.com/sanette/bogue]

  Just in case some of you are interested in having a look. 
  Comments
  welcome, of course.

[https://github.com/sanette/bogue] 
<https://github.com/sanette/bogue>

sanette later added
───────────────────

  I just made a video to show some of *bogue*'s features:

  <https://youtu.be/isFLxnDooL8>

XMPP room (muc) for OCaml
═════════════════════════

  Archive: 
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/xmpp-room-muc-for-ocaml/4039/1>

Orbifx announced
────────────────

  I'm not aware of any other XMPP rooms for OCaml, so I've made 
  one:

  <xmpp:ocaml at conference.orbitalfox.eu?join>

  Come join if you want to hang out with OCamlers.

  Ideas & thoughts are welcome!

obus 1.2.0
══════════

  Archive: <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-obus-1-2-0/4038/1>

Freyr666 announced
──────────────────

  I'm pleased to announce a new `obus' release.

What is obus
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

  A pure OCaml implementation of the D-Bus IPC protocol, heavily 
  used in
  Freedesktop/linux world [1].

Notable changes
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

  • `obus' is being transitioned to `ocaml-community'
  • switched to `dune'
  • `camlp4' parts were replaced with `menhir'
  • `camlp4' syntax extension was replaced with the `ppx'-based 
  ones

  This release shouldn't break anything (safe for the syntax 
  extension).

  Special thanks to @steinuil and @pukkamustard for doing most of 
  the
  "dunification" work.

Thoughts about the future
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

  So after pondering on obus refactoring I came to the following 
  ideas,
  which I would like to discuss:

  1) `IDL', an intermediate language used for the D-Bus 
  interfaces'
     description doesn't worth the effort and is better to be 
     dropped.

     D-Bus uses XML for such a purpose and there is no merit in 
     having
     an additional language doing the same (with minor 
     improvements like
     not being XML-abomination and the ability to define numeric 
     types
     as OCaml variants). It makes sense to generate OCaml files 
     from the
     XML directly and don't use any obus-specific additional 
     language.

  2) `ppx' syntax extensions could also be dropped since they 
  don't do
     much stuff. Also I haven't seen anybody using them, but I 
     could be
     wrong.

     So it's better to either improve it (maybe turn IDL language 
     into
     simple `ppx' annotations) or drop it completely. Personally, 
     I like
     the idea of not using `ppx' because they are slowing things 
     down
     making the project lag behind ocaml releases, and making 
     things
     fragile in general.

  3) obus should be split into proper subpackages, like `obus',
     `obus-network-manager', `obus-notifications' etc

  So since it's a community project from now on, it would be great 
  to
  hear what obus users and contributors are thinking about all
  forementioned. cast @diml @talex5 @perry @johnelse

  [1] <https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/>

PSA: ocaml/opam2 docker images updated to 4.08.0 release
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/psa-ocaml-opam2-docker-images-updated-to-4-08-0-release/3948/2>

Anil Madhavapeddy announced
───────────────────────────

  Another update: the base distributions of the ocaml/opam2 images 
  have
  also been updated to support Fedora 30, Alpine 3.10, OpenSUSE 
  Leap
  42.1 and also the impending Debian 10 (Buster) release.  We have 
  also
  deprecated Fedora 27/28, Ubuntu 14.04 and Alpine 3.8 in favour 
  of the
  newer releases.  The 4.09 switches also reflect the recently 
  released
  4.09+beta1 snapshot.

  There have been a few requests for 'slimmer' images that use up 
  less
  disk-space. The reason the existing ones are so big is that each
  container has multiple precompiled compilers (either multiple 
  major
  releases, or feature variants such as flambda or afl).  This is 
  really
  useful for continuous integration, but is less ideal if you just 
  want
  a quick OCaml compiler container to build some software on your
  QubesOS laptop.

  In order to accommodate both usecases, I'm going to resurrect 
  the
  `ocaml/opam' containers for the "slim" usecase.  The containers 
  in
  `ocaml/opam' are currently deprecated while we did the opam2 
  release,
  but now that is out of the way we can remove the opam1 
  containers.
  Over the next few months, we'll have `ocaml/opam' containers 
  with
  minimally sized toolchains for production compilation use, and 
  the
  `ocaml/opam2' containers will continue to be maintained 
  unchanged for
  CI use.

  As always, more feedback or usecases welcome to help guide the
  evolution of this infrastructure.

Other OCaml News
════════════════

From the ocamlcore planet blog
──────────────────────────────

  Here are links from many OCaml blogs aggregated at [OCaml 
  Planet].

  • [i-Lab 2019]
  • [What is an explicit bijection? (FPSAC 2019 slides)]
  • [Release of OCamlFormat 0.10]

[OCaml Planet] <http://ocaml.org/community/planet/>

[i-Lab 2019] <https://tarides.com/blog/2019-07-05-i-lab-2019.html>

[What is an explicit bijection? (FPSAC 2019 slides)]
<http://math.andrej.com/2019/07/04/what-is-an-explicit-bijection-fpsac-2019-slides/>

[Release of OCamlFormat 0.10]
<https://tarides.com/blog/2019-06-27-release-of-ocamlformat-0-10.html>

Old CWN
═══════

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  [Alan Schmitt]

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[the archive] <http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/>

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[Alan Schmitt] <http://alan.petitepomme.net/>

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