OCaml Weekly News
Hello
Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of October 17 to 24, 2023.
Table of Contents
- Using Reason and React meta-frameworks. Also some Melange 2
- Ppxlib dev meetings
- A hack to implement efficient TLS (thread-local-storage)
- New Get Started Documentation on OCaml.org
- Web Analytics on OCaml.org
- OCaml.org Newsletter: August and September 2023
- Release of odoc 2.3.0
- Announce Seppo.Social v0.3 and invite thoughts
- bwd 2.3.0 for backward lists
- Storing credentials to a private OPAM repository
- OCaml on Windows: the long paths issue
- A Roadmap for the OCaml Platform - Seeking Your Feedback
- Adding Dynamic Arrays / Vectors to StdLib
- vdom 0.3: functional UI applications now with custom event handlers
- Old CWN
Using Reason and React meta-frameworks. Also some Melange 2
Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/using-reason-and-react-meta-frameworks-also-some-melange-2/13260/1
psb announced
Ppxlib dev meetings
Sonja Heinze announced
@octachron has come to the ppxlib dev meeting today, which has been a very nice surprise. It’s nice to discuss intersections between ppxlib and the compiler together with compiler maintainers. Thanks, @octachron!
So it has been @panglesd, @octachron and me in the meeting. Here are the meeting notes: https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ppxlib/wiki/Dev-meeting-19-09-2023.
A hack to implement efficient TLS (thread-local-storage)
Vesa Karvonen announced
Currently OCaml 5 provides a Domain.DLS module for domain-local-state.
Unfortunately,
- there is no corresponding
Thread.TLSfor (sys)thread-local-state, and - the current implementation of
Domain.DLSis not thread-safe.
I don’t want to spend time to motivate this topic, but for many of the use cases of Domain.DLS, what you actually want, is to use a Thread.TLS. IOW, many of the uses of Domain.DLS are probably “wrong” and should actually use a Thread.TLS, because, when using Domain.DLS, the assumption must be that you don’t have multiple threads on the domain, but that is typically decided at a higher level in the application and so making such an assumption is typically not safe.
Domain.DLS is not thread-safe
I mentioned that the current implementation Domain.DLS is not thread-safe. What I mean by that is that the current implementation is literally not thread-safe at all in the sense that unrelated concurrent Domain.DLS accesses can actually break the DLS.
Consider the implementation of Domain.DLS.get:
let get (idx, init) = let st = maybe_grow idx in let v = st.(idx) in if v == unique_value then let v' = Obj.repr (init ()) in st.(idx) <- (Sys.opaque_identity v'); Obj.magic v' else Obj.magic v
If there are two (or more) threads on a single domain that concurrently call get before init has been called initially, then what might happen is that init gets called twice (or more) and the threads get different values which could e.g. be pointers to two different mutable objects.
Consider the implementation of maybe_grow:
let maybe_grow idx = let st = get_dls_state () in let sz = Array.length st in if idx < sz then st else begin let rec compute_new_size s = if idx < s then s else compute_new_size (2 * s) in let new_sz = compute_new_size sz in let new_st = Array.make new_sz unique_value in Array.blit st 0 new_st 0 sz; set_dls_state new_st; new_st end
Imagine calling get (which calls maybe_grow) with two different keys from two different threads concurrently. The end result might be that two different arrays are allocated and only one of them “wins”. What this means, for example, is that effects of set calls may effectively be undone by concurrent calls of get.
In other words, the Domain.DLS, as it is currently implemented, is not thread-safe.
How to implement an efficient Thread.TLS?
If you dig into the implementation of threads, you will notice that the opaque Thread.t type is actually a heap block (record) of three fields. You can see the Thread.t accessors:
#define Ident(v) Field(v, 0) #define Start_closure(v) Field(v, 1) #define Terminated(v) Field(v, 2)
and the Thread.t allocation:
static value caml_thread_new_descriptor(value clos) { CAMLparam1(clos); CAMLlocal1(mu); value descr; /* Create and initialize the termination semaphore */ mu = caml_threadstatus_new(); /* Create a descriptor for the new thread */ descr = caml_alloc_3(0, Val_long(atomic_fetch_add(&thread_next_id, +1)), clos, mu); CAMLreturn(descr); }
The second field, Start_closure, is used to pass the closure to the thread start:
static void * caml_thread_start(void * v) { caml_thread_t th = (caml_thread_t) v; int dom_id = th->domain_id; value clos; void * signal_stack; caml_init_domain_self(dom_id); st_tls_set(caml_thread_key, th); thread_lock_acquire(dom_id); restore_runtime_state(th); signal_stack = caml_init_signal_stack(); clos = Start_closure(Active_thread->descr); caml_modify(&(Start_closure(Active_thread->descr)), Val_unit); caml_callback_exn(clos, Val_unit); caml_thread_stop(); caml_free_signal_stack(signal_stack); return 0; }
and, as seen above, it is overwritten with the unit value before the closure is called.
What this means is that when you call Thread.self () and get a reference to the current Thread.t, the Start_closure field of that heap block will be the unit value:
assert (Obj.field (Obj.repr (Thread.self ())) 1 = Obj.repr ())
Let’s hijack that field for the purpose of implementing an efficient TLS!
Here is the full hack:
module TLS : sig type 'a key val new_key : (unit -> 'a) -> 'a key val get : 'a key -> 'a val set : 'a key -> 'a -> unit end = struct type 'a key = { index : int; compute : unit -> 'a } let counter = Atomic.make 0 let unique () = Obj.repr counter let new_key compute = let index = Atomic.fetch_and_add counter 1 in { index; compute } type t = { _id : int; mutable tls : Obj.t } let ceil_pow_2_minus_1 n = let n = n lor (n lsr 1) in let n = n lor (n lsr 2) in let n = n lor (n lsr 4) in let n = n lor (n lsr 8) in let n = n lor (n lsr 16) in if Sys.int_size > 32 then n lor (n lsr 32) else n let[@inline never] grow_tls t before index = let new_length = ceil_pow_2_minus_1 (index + 1) in let after = Array.make new_length (unique ()) in Array.blit before 0 after 0 (Array.length before); t.tls <- Obj.repr after; after let[@inline] get_tls index = let t = Obj.magic (Thread.self ()) in let tls = t.tls in if Obj.is_int tls then grow_tls t [||] index else let tls = (Obj.magic tls : Obj.t array) in if index < Array.length tls then tls else grow_tls t tls index let get key = let tls = get_tls key.index in let value = Array.unsafe_get tls key.index in if value != unique () then Obj.magic value else let value = key.compute () in Array.unsafe_set tls key.index (Obj.repr (Sys.opaque_identity value)); value let set key value = let tls = get_tls key.index in Array.unsafe_set tls key.index (Obj.repr (Sys.opaque_identity value)) end
The above achieves about 80% of the performance of Domain.DLS allowing roughly 241M ~TLS.get~s/s (vs 296M ~Domain.DLS.get~s/s) on my laptop.
New Get Started Documentation on OCaml.org
Thibaut Mattio announced
Dear OCaml Community,
On behalf of the OCaml.org team, I’m thrilled to announce the publication of the new Get Started documentation.
It is organised in three stages:
- Installing OCaml, which guides you through the installation of opam, the initialisation of a switch and the installation of Platform tools.
- A Tour of OCaml, which walks you through the basics of the OCaml language and invites you to use the top-level to start playing with the language.
- Your First OCaml Program, which is a bit more practical and assumes you’re using an editor to help you create your first executable using Dune.
In addition to these, you’ll also find introductory guides on the tooling to complement the introduction to the language:
Our goal is to make OCaml.org the best resource to get started with and learn OCaml.
There are still a lot of gaps to fill in the documentation – and we’ll continue to work on these in the coming months – but the Get Started experience is probably the most important part of the documentation to alleviate friction points that discourage new users from adopting OCaml. As such, don’t hesitate to publicise these, but most importantly, let us know your feedback!
Happy reading!
Web Analytics on OCaml.org
Continuing this thread, Thibaut Mattio said
Thanks for the feedback and the participation in the survey!
Seeing that there aren’t major concerns, we’ll be moving forward with a trial of Plausible.
As @avsm said, we plan on self-hosting it on the OCaml.org infrastructure to respect our commitment to not use any third-party service. This means that not only we won’t be collecting any personal data, but even the aggregate data will never leave the OCaml.org infrastructure.
There’s roughly a third of people who are against adding analytics to OCaml.org in the survey above. We strongly believe that Plausible is aligned with our commitment to protect OCaml.org visitors’ privacy, but I’ll echo @avsm in saying that if people believe that this is not the case, I’d love to hear about the specific concerns and ideas for alternatives.
To answer some questions above:
Are you going to give a public access to the Plausible statistics ? Or will it be only for the maintainers i.e. Tarides ?
The analytics dashboard will be public.
Have you considered running a server-side analytics service?
Yes, @JiaeK actually worked on a server-side analytics service as part of her Outreachy internship in 2021 and had made fantastic progress. The WIP dashboard is available at https://ocaml.org/dashboard.
It currently doesn’t collect any data and only logs unique page accesses.
We had planned on building on top of this, but as you can imagine this is a large project, and the OCaml.org team has been prioritising improvements to the site itself.
I found the following to be a good read on the pros and cons of server-side vs client-side analytics: https://plausible.io/blog/server-log-analysis#how-big-of-a-data-gap-is-there-between-server-log-analysis-and-web-analytics
TL;DR for all its benefits, server-side analytics comes with a load of drawbacks and isn’t fundamentally more privacy-friendly than privacy-oriented client-side analytics solution.
That being said, if someone would like to contribute to the Dream analytics dashboard to make it usable as an alternative to other analytics solutions, I’d be more than happy to move towards this! Don’t hesitate to reach out to me or other OCaml.org maintainers about that.
OCaml.org Newsletter: August and September 2023
Thibaut Mattio announced
Welcome to the August and September 2023 edition of the OCaml.org newsletter! This update has been compiled by the OCaml.org team. You can find the previous updates on Discuss.
Our goal is to make OCaml.org the best resource for anyone who wants to get started and be productive in OCaml. The OCaml.org newsletter provides an update on our progress towards that goal and an overview of changes we are working on.
We couldn’t do it without all the amazing OCaml community members who help us review, revise, and create better OCaml documentation. Your feedback enables us to better prioritise our work and make progress towards our goal. Thank you!
These past two months, our priorities were:
- Learn Area: We’re working towards making OCaml.org a great resource to learn OCaml and discover its ecosystem. We’ve focussed on getting the new Get Started documentation ready for publication, and we started work on a second iteration of the designs for the Learn area.
- General Improvements: As usual, we also worked on general maintenance and improvements based on user feedback, so we’re highlighting some of our work below.
Learn Area
- 1. Redesign of the Learn Area
After completing the first version of the design in July, we started working on a new iteration that is more in line with the current branding of the site. Feedback from the team and users has been extremely positive on the UX (the structure of the new documentation and the layout of the pages), but we felt that the design direction needed to be reconciled with and improve on the existing designs of all pages. Thus, we are revisiting the designs’ UI aspects in both light and dark modes.
Relevant PRs and Activities:
- Continued work on Figma UX/UI designs for the new Learn area:
- Continued overall Learn area UI design
- Improved dark mode for the home page on mobile and made necessary text amendments
- Designed mobile views for the search field with an open navigation feature and breadcrumb navigation
- Worked on updating the design systems to ensure consistency between light and dark variants
- Continued the implementation of new components for the Learn Area:
- Skill tag component for the Learn area is completed – ocaml/ocaml.org#1427
- Learn overview cards (Install + Standard Library API) completed – ocaml/ocaml.org#1441
- Books block component completed – ocaml/ocaml.org#1481
- Tutorial block component completed – ocaml/ocaml.org#1387
- Exercises block component – ocaml/ocaml.org#1479
- Video block component – ocaml/ocaml.org#1480
- Language Manual Banner Component - ocaml/ocaml.org#1406
- Change learn area tab navigation color - ocaml/ocaml.org#1522
- Continued work on Figma UX/UI designs for the new Learn area:
- 2. OCaml Documentation
Since August, we’ve focused mainly on the “Getting Started” documents, including a guide to installing OCaml, a “tour” of the OCaml language, and a tutorial to create your first project in OCaml.
Anticipating on our October update, we’ve just published the new Get Started documentation pages! :tada:
We still encourage community feedback, as we fully expect to iteratively improve these docs in the coming weeks, especially as they will now serve as the primary resource to everyone who wants to get up and running with OCaml.
Our focus will now shift to filling the gaps in the Language section of the documentation, starting with the Basic Data Types and Functions and Values pages, which are currently in the Community review stage.
Relevant PRs and Activities:
- First Draft In Progress:
- Sets
- Maps
- Mutable State / Imperative Programming
- In Review (internal):
- Polymorphic Variants
- In Review (community):
- Published:
- First Draft In Progress:
General Improvements
This month, we’re welcoming 2 new contributors:
- @ShalokShalom improved the “Why OCaml?” page - ocaml/ocaml.org#1516
- @echuber2 fixed a broken link to the Editor setup instructions - ocaml/ocaml.org#1552
and welcome contributions from returning contributors:
- @AshineFoster fixed date parse error for news section of the blog – ocaml/ocaml.org#1503
- @edwintorok updated XenServer entry on Job board and Industrial Users – ocaml/ocaml.org#1511
Thanks a lot to all the contributors this month! It’s lovely to see more and more people making contributions to the site!
Relevant PRs and Activities:
- Local blogs on OCaml.org (for now only the opam blog) now have a dedicated RSS feed – ocaml/ocaml.org#1459
- Added an Is OCaml Web Yet? page - ocaml/ocaml.org#1226
- Repaired broken links to the extent possible in 17 different files – ocaml/ocaml.org#1461, ocaml/ocaml.org#1515, and ocaml/ocaml.org#1520
- Change Makefile of the Playground to create a local opam switch (in line with the local switch created by OCaml.org’s Makefile) in order to resolve problems with copying the
Stdlibbuild artifacts – ocaml/ocaml.org#1469 - A link to an Outreachy blog post has been contributed to the OCaml Planet – ocaml/ocaml.org#1474
- Fixed an issue with Package search on Safari – ocaml/ocaml.org#1510
- Highlighted active link in primary color and increased clickable area for links in mobile main navigation - ocaml/ocaml.org#1521
- Minor improvements on documentation generation. Single new lines in
.mdfiles were translated to linebreaks by voodoo. Now, voodoo emits space characters for these – ocaml-doc/voodoo#119 - Reduced spacing in package documentation between
.specand.spec-doc– ocaml/ocaml.org#1509
Release of odoc 2.3.0
Paul-Elliot announced
The odoc team is thrilled to announce the release of odoc 2.3.0! 🎉 This release is the result of almost a year of diligent work since the last major release of odoc 2.2.0, it comes packed with significant new features and improvements!
🌟 Spotlight Features of Odoc 2.3.0
Here are a couple of the new features introduced in Odoc 2.3.0 that we’d like to highlight.
- 1. Table Support
Table support is the last addition to the odoc language, and comes with two syntax flavours: a light one, and a heavy one. The light markup is similar to markdown’s markup for table, producing tables that are readable in the source file as well.
However, this markup has some limitation, since it only allows inline content in cells. It can also be difficult to read and mantain for big tables, without a proper editor support. For this reason, Odoc also provides a “heavy” markup, closer to the html one, with fewer limitations!
Here is a table in heavy, light, and rendered form:
{t Table | support ------|-------- is | cool! }{table {tr {th Table} {th support}} {tr {td is} {td cool!}} }Table support is cool! - 2. Source Code Rendering
Source code rendering is an extremely exciting new feature. Not only
odocis now able to generate a rendering of the source files (and source hierarchy) of a project, but it is also able to create direct links from the documentation to the implementation!This puts the documentation browsing to a new level, by helping to quickly answer any implementation-related question!
The source code rendering is also tailored to OCaml, for instance with links from variables to their definition, something missing from traditional html-based source viewing such as github!
Using this features in odoc’s driver will require some work, but you can already have a preview of the feature by going to the odoc API website, which was built with the feature enabled. For instance, the Odoc_html module is now populated with many
Sourcelinks, jumping right into the implementation file! Directory pages to browser the implementation are also included :D
🗺️ Background & Roadmap
Before displaying the full changelog, some background on our roadmap and what comes next.
The lack of access to comprehensive documentation for OCaml libraries is one of the biggest pain points reported by the OCaml community, as highlighted in the 2022 OCaml survey (c.f. Q50).
This motivated the odoc and OCaml.org teams to jointly work on a centralised package documentation, that went live in April 2022, as part of the new version of OCaml.org.
With documentation for OCaml libraries readily available on OCaml.org, we now turn our focus on making sure that library authors have the tooling they need to create high-quality documentation.
Our roadmap highlights some features we believe will make the generated documentation significantly better for readers, and documentation-writing much more pleasant and rewarding.
This release is a significant milestone in implementing the features on our roadmap and is the precursor to a series of upcoming releases. Odoc 2.4.0 will follow shortly and will bring support for search. Stay tuned and follow our progress through the OCaml Platform newsletter!
🤝 Join The Mission
While we are dedicated to developing the best tooling to generate and serve documentation on OCaml.org, creating a well-documented library ecosystem can only be a collective effort. Package authors: we’re working hard to give you great tools, but we’ll need all your help to create an ecosystem of well-documented libraries for OCaml!
If you find that writing documentation for your library isn’t as straightforward as you would like, please do share your feedback with us.
2.3.0 Changelog
- Added
- Source code rendering (@Julow, @panglesd, @jonludlam #909, #996, #993, #982)
- Handle tables markup (@panglesd, @gpetiot, #893)
- Initial support for assets (@trefis, #975)
- odoc-parser remerged (@jonludlam, #973) This includes table support (@gpetiot, @panglesd, ocaml-doc/odoc-parser#11 ocaml-doc/odoc-parser#14) and delimited code blocks with optional output (@jonludlam, ocaml-doc/odoc-parser#17)
- Add a tooltip to references with text (@Julow, #945)
- Add emoji to alerts in CSS (@yawaramin, #928)
- Add common language in shipped highlightjs (@Julow, #953)
- Display ’private’ keyword for private type extensions (@gpetiot, #1019)
- Fixed
- Fix
--hiddennot always taken into account (@panglesd, #940) - Syntax highlight labels in function arguments (@panglesd, #990)
- Ensure generated html ends with a newline (@3Rafal, #954)
- Warn against tags in pages (@Julow, #948)
- Remove unhelpful ’Unresolved_apply’ errors (@gpetiot, #946)
- Allow links and references in headings (@EmileTrotignon, @panglesd, #942)
- Fix rendering of method types (@zoggy, #935)
- Fix section labelling with submodules (@EmileTrotignon, @panglesd, #931)
- LaTeX backend fixes (@Octachron, #921 #920)
- html: Remove extra space in class declarations (@Julow, #936)
- Fix rendering of unresolved references (@Julow, #957)
- Fix
Announce Seppo.Social v0.3 and invite thoughts
Marcus Rohrmoser 🌍 announced
Hi all,
I am happy to announce yesterday’s release of v0.3 of #Seppo!, the friendly, sustainable, permacomputing inspired alternative to all those heavy microblog servers. Generously funded by #NLnet https://nlnet.nl/project/Seppo
It’s built to be operated by yourself on commodity shared webspace without requiring much further attention.
Read more at https://seppo.social/en/support/#installation
- Download: https://seppo.social/Linux-x86_64-0.3
- Binary: https://seppo.social/Linux-x86_64-0.3/seppo.cgi
- Source: https://seppo.social/Linux-x86_64-0.3/source.tar.gz
- Git: https://seppo.social/v/5f078d9
Changes
- post notes
- being subscribed to (aka ’followed’)
- distribute post to subscribers
- job queue to do so
- housekeeping UX (password, profile page, timezone)
Your thoughts are very much appreciated.
Marcus Rohrmoser https://digitalcourage.social/@mro/111261271071034377
P.S.: There will be 🐫 stickers again, soon.
bwd 2.3.0 for backward lists
Favonia announced
I am happy to announce a new version of bwd for backward lists! The new release added init and a few other List functions introduced in OCaml 5.1 (is_empty, find_index, and find_mapi). It also added many inlining annotations.
Backward lists are isomorphic to regular lists but place elements backward. Using a different type for semantically backward lists can avoid bugs such as missing or misusing List.rev or List.rev_append. Our strategy is to keep the elements’ textual order and avoid functions such as List.rev. Initially, this package was created to eliminate bugs in our type checkers, but we have been using it almost everywhere since then. I recommend using bwd if you use list to store anything semantically backward. 😉
More information at https://github.com/RedPRL/ocaml-bwd
Storing credentials to a private OPAM repository
Richard Degenne announced
Welp, 4 years later, I decided to give that whole private OPAM repository thing another shot, and I ended up with something I’m quite proud of, with a private Opam repository, and private packages uploaded to GitLab’s package registries!
OCaml on Windows: the long paths issue
Manas announced
Not very long ago, I managed to solve the long paths issue for OCaml and I want to share how.
While building a large project, I ran into the path issues - Dune would fail with errors saying a certain file present in a long file was not found. Shortening libraries names helped. But what was really needed was manifesting OCaml tools so that they can perform I/O on long paths as described here on MSDN docs.
Guidelines there expect binary artifacts (dll or exe) have to be manifested with something like this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <application xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3"> <windowsSettings xmlns:ws2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2016/WindowsSettings"> <ws2:longPathAware>true</ws2:longPathAware> </windowsSettings> </application>
Ideally, the application being built is also manifested so.
I use esy as my daily driver for Windows development. I have always found the workflow on Windows with esy reasonable and never stopped using it since I discovered. Over time, I have taken up maintenance of the project too.
OCaml on Windows is practical only with Cygwin. Not because the tools needs a Unix like environment - they have evolved significants over the years since I have been using OCaml on Windows. Cygwin is convenient because of the libraries in the ecosystem - for instance all the native libraries from GNU project. GNU projects are easily built inside Cygwin/MSYS/mingw but not so outside.
I was worried that I’d have to write some gory hack in the compiler to manifest every binary artifact - dune had to be manifested too. There are many ways to embed the manifest with tools windres etc. But fortunately, I found that Mingw already embeds all executables with a default one. It can be found here among the Cygwin projects
I decided to fork the repository and use the manifest MSDN docs recommended. You can find it here This helped me fix my project, but I wanted this for the rest of the community too.
Esy uses a utility called esy-bash which packages the Cygwin environment for the user. We find that users have mostly uniform setups this way. Helps with reproducibility. I decided to tweak esy-bash to package my fork of the windows-default-manifest along with other Cygwin packages. This way OCaml users dont have to worry about the long paths issue anymore.
This has been available since esy 0.7.0. If you’d like to try the latest esy, it is available on NPM and can be installed with npm i -g esy
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this approach. More than happy to contribute a solution like this for opam too.
A Roadmap for the OCaml Platform - Seeking Your Feedback
Archive: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/a-roadmap-for-the-ocaml-platform-seeking-your-feedback/12238/68
Thibaut Mattio announced
I updated the roadmap to incorporate the latest feedback. This update:
- Adds a workflow to support Dune plugins (W15)
- Adds a workflow to integrate with other build systems (W16)
- Adds a workflow to compile to WebAssembly from Dune (W14)
- Adds a workflow to compile MirageOS unikernels from Dune (W12)
- Updates Literate Programming workflow to use odoc and mention interactive code blocks (W24)
- Updates Generate Documentation workflow to list features planned as part of the odoc roadmap (W25)
- Updates Package Publication to remove mention that users need not to commit an opam file (W26)
A big thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion! Building a community-driven roadmap is no trivial exercise, but witnessing so many people being driven to share constructive feedback, there’s no doubt that it’s absolutely worth it.
Much of the feedback, both here and in other Discuss threads (e.g. https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/the-ocaml-platform-a-vehement-dissent/13008), points out the roadmap’s pronounced Dune-focus. I want to be very clear that while the focus of the coming years highlighted in the roadmap is indeed to consolidate the integration of the Platform tools to create a cohesive experience – a top request in the OCaml surveys – there’s no intention to make Dune the singular solution for OCaml tooling. The OCaml Platform is a collection of independent tools that can be used without Dune, and this will remain the case.
We’ve worked on formalising the Guiding Principles before sharing the roadmap. One key principle we’ve asserted is that while Platform tools operate under a single frontend (the editor or Dune at the moment), they remain independent. @xavierleroy rightly suggested that we commit to this in stronger terms, so we’ve updated the relevant Principle to make this more explicit.
In addition to clarifying the Guiding Principles, seeing that the majority of the feedback we received is asking for better support for non-Dune users, two of the added workflows in this last update (W15 and W16) aim at bringing better support for third-party (i.e. non-Platform) tools.
Special thanks to @jbeckford for initiating discussions on Dune plugins!
Let us know what you think of these new workflows and the other updates! As usual, let’s give an additional 2 weeks for feedback on the roadmap. Barring significant concerns, we’ll undergo a final revision based on all the discussions before adopting the first version.
PS: thank you @shonfeder for pointing out that the issues were deactivated on the repository. I’ve activated them, so don’t hesitate to open issues there now.
Adding Dynamic Arrays / Vectors to StdLib
Continuing this thread, gasche announced
Hi everyone,
A short note: we eventually manage to build consensus on https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/11882 and I merged it yesterday, so there will be a Dynarray module in the standard library in OCaml 5.2. Thanks @BastouP411 and @c-cube for their efforts bringing us to this point, and to the many reviewers of the latest iteration of the PR (in particular @314eter, @c-cube, @clef-men, @damiendoligez, @dbuenzli, @gadmm, @Octachron and @wiktor).
The implementation uses an indirection to get a type-safe “empty” value to use in unused elements of the support array. Hopefully we can improve on that with a safe magical implementation in the short future – but I think that the performance is good enough already.
vdom 0.3: functional UI applications now with custom event handlers
Aurélien Saue announced
We are thrilled to announce the release of the new v0.3 release of vdom, previously named ocaml-vdom!
The library implements the functional Elm architecture. Combined with the power of OCaml, it makes the development of UI applications easy and reliable, and that is why we have been using it internally since 2016.
A highlight of this new version is the introduction of fully customizable event handlers, using Elm-style decoders. This enhancement simplifies the management of intricate browser events, such as retrieving drag-and-dropped files.
Read our blog post for more details about this new feature!
GitHub homepage: https://github.com/LexiFi/ocaml-vdom
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