0005561: Option to disable -principal mode

Notes
(0007197) gasche (developer) 2012-03-27 16:53	So you would call `ocamlc -principal -noprincipal` or `ocamlc -noprincipal -principal`, and expect it to disable principality checks? That looks a little weird to me (I like to think that command-line arguments are declarative rather than imperative).

(0007198) frisch (developer) 2012-03-27 17:05	The last option would take precedence, as for warnings. I find it quite convenient to be able to define a "OCAMLFLAGS" globally, and adapt it locally for specific files or directories, by appending some extra options.

(0007228) protz (manager) 2012-03-29 10:53	What about an optional parameter after -principal? * -principal ? current behavior * -principal yes ? current behavior * -principal no ? overrides any previous values for the argument. That sounds like a valid use-case for a big codebase.

(0007229) gasche (developer) 2012-03-29 11:10	Regarding the interface, I rather prefer Alain's proposal. The change would however raise the question of doing this for other options: -norectypes, -nostrict-sequence, -stdlib, -assert, -nounsafe... (But we already have -nolabels and -labels that (if I understand correctly) do are not inverse one of another.) I'm not sure the case for warning makes for a good precedent (no pun intended), but if it's decided to add -noprincipal I really don't see why we shouldn't have -norectypes as well.

(0007231) frisch (developer) 2012-03-29 11:18	-rectypes is quite viral: if you compile a module with it, you need to compile all other modules that depend on it with -rectypes as well. So it's rather unlikely that -rectypes would be the default for a big project, with some "-norectypes" exceptions. I also don't expect -unsafe to be the default for a big code base. It could be turned on for performance-critical and carefully verified code (but in my experience, it has a rather low impact, so I'm not even sure it is used at all). A -nostrict-sequence would probably make sense.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2012-03-27 15:01	frisch	New Issue
2012-03-27 16:53	gasche	Note Added: 0007197
2012-03-27 17:05	frisch	Note Added: 0007198
2012-03-29 10:53	protz	Note Added: 0007228
2012-03-29 10:53	protz	Status	new => acknowledged
2012-03-29 11:10	gasche	Note Added: 0007229
2012-03-29 11:18	frisch	Note Added: 0007231
2012-06-20 11:19	frisch	Category	OCaml general => OCaml typing

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