On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 04:10:03PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 10:36:11PM +0200, Maxence Guesdon wrote:
> > Dans son style inimitable, John Goerzen écrivait:
> > 
> > > But the fact that these libraries exist is, at its heart, a symptom of
> > > the problems with the OCaml standard library.
> > 
> > I'm getting bored of this song. What about this one :
> > "The number of extlibs is a symptom of the problems with the
> > community of OCaml users" ?
> 
> You view it as a problem that some in the OCaml community would like to
> see a more featureful and easy to use standard library?  Why?

Let me expand on this a bit.  It is clear that people are unsatisfied
with the quality of the standard library and that others have been able
to provide useful features (*cough* IPv6 and other basic Unix calls) far
sooner than Inria has.  Why are you oppsed to this?

There are some things that will work fine with a system such as GODI
once it gets a little more mature.  My ConfigParser module, for
instance, has no need to be in the standard library (OTOH, there's no
need for it to be outside it either, but I don't care either way on that
if GODI continues improving.)

But what about the C Extlib's expanded support for sockets and IPv6?  I
can either use its support, or the standard Unix module.  If I choose
the standard Unix module, I have compatibility with other OCaml code
written by others, but I lack IPv6.  If I choose the C Extlib module,
all my I/O is tied to that module. 

A plethora of mutually-incompatible modules that duplicate and extend
standard library features is in nobody's interest.  The result will be
an irrelevant standard library and a fragmented development community.

-- John

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