Previous week Up Next week
Hello,
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of 05 to 12 August, 2003.
1) GODI news
2) GD4O
3) call for English-Japanese translators
4) mod_caml 0.4 & continuing dynlink problems
==============================================================================
1) GODI news
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Gerd Stolpmann announced:
There is now an improved version of GODI for download:
http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/godi-bootstrap-20030805.tar.gz
The most important change is that godi_build announces its build plan
before it starts, making the build process more transparent. The build
plan also shows hints which options in godi.conf have an effect on which
package.
Further improvements:
- For Linux systems, many of the system commands can now be found in
both /bin and /usr/bin. There does not seem to be a standard, so
GODI now searches the commands.
- The bootstrap script tries to pre-configure labltk. It looks into
much more locations that the O'Caml configure script. I think this
was one of the biggest problems in the first release.
- For BSD systems, not all of the bootstrap tools are built.
- I have tested GODI on:
* Debian Linux
* SuSE Linux
* Solaris 8
* FreeBSD (ancient version)
Note that you will have problems if there is only tcl/tk 8.4; this is
an O'Caml 3.06 problem.
This release of GODI still supports only 3.06. If it is usable, I will
go on with 3.07beta.
** Gerd Stolpmann announced:
The GODI repositories are now accessible from the Internet:
https://gps.dynxs.de
I am using subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org) as
revision control system, so you need a subversion client to
fully access the repository (should be available for most
distros). For more instructions see https://gps.dynxs.de.
It is also possible to access the repository with an
arbitrary WebDAV client, or just with your browser.
The repository allows everybody to add build instructions
for packages one would like to see in GODI. A short
tutorial is also available at
https://gps.dynxs.de/projects/godi/README.devel .
I know that not everything is yet perfect in GODI; Yes, it
is too Unixish, but nobody has shown a better way that
(a) works also for the complicated packages, and (b) would
not mean a huge amount of work to realize it. So I propose
now to continue this way, and to collect build instructions, and
to add user-friendly GUIs on top of the existing command-
line infrastructure. Last but not least a Cygwin port should
be tried.
In the case there is interest for a mailing list, I can
open one. Please let me know in this case.
** Gerd Stolpmann announced:
GODI supports now 3.07beta1. To enable it, add this line
to godi.conf:
GODI_SECTION = 3.07beta1
Furthermore, I would recommend to either start with a new bootstrap, or
clean your current installation before you try to upgrade. Many packages
have still the same version number, and this may confuse GODI:
cd <prefix>/build
rm -rf base godi
cd <prefix>/build/packages
rm */* # or move packages away
godi_delete -r godi-ocaml godi-pcre godi-ocaml-src
(godi_pcre because of a missing dependency). Then start with
godi_build -update, and run godi_build on the packages you would like
to have. godi_build -upgrade should not be used for an O'Caml upgrade.
Furthermore, I also recommend to add
NO_MTREE=yes
to godi.conf; otherwise it might be possible that you get error messages
when you godi_add a binary package.
==============================================================================
2) GD4O
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Matt Gushee announced:
The second alpha release of GD4O (OCaml wrapper for the GD graphics
library) is now available at:
http://havenrock.com/software/gd4o/
Changes from 1.0a1 include:
* Filled arc drawing
* Truecolor image creation
* Property settings: brush, tile, thickness, clipping area
* Further improvements to test program
As always, comments and questions are welcome.
P.S.: Don't expect a new release *every* day ;-) I just happen to have a
little extra time this week.
** Matt Gushee announced:
Yet another release of the OCaml wrapper for the GD graphics library.
There is only one new feature in this release, but it's an important
one: TrueType font support (specifically, the gdImageStringFT method is
now supported -- the other TrueType font methods are yet to come).
The home page for the package is:
http://havenrock.com/software/gd4o/
As always, comments and questions are welcome.
==============================================================================
3) call for English-Japanese translators
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Shinya Kawanaka said:
There are many peaple in Japan using and/or studying OCaml, but there are
few Japanese documents. I know Eijiro Sumii is translating the O'Reilly
book "Developing Applications with Objective Caml" into Japanese now,
however the OCaml manual, maybe the most important document, doesn't seem
to be translated by anyone yet.
I have already received an official agreement of the translation
from the development team, so I have created the site,
http://wiki.ocaml.jp/ (all in Japanese), to manage the translation.
If you are interested in this project, please join us.
# I also made the OCaml information site http://ocaml.jp/ (all in Japanese)
# for Japanese OCaml users. If interested, access it please.
** Eijiro Sumii said:
As Mr. Kawanaka mentions, several volunteers including myself are also
translating the OCaml _book_ (http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/) from
English (or French) to Japanese. Although we have set up the
collaboration environment and completed initial translation of several
chapters, we are still far in short of manpower and time. So, if you
feel like contributing to the international OCaml community, please
contact me (sumii@saul.cis.upenn.edu) and join us as well!
P.S. Please feel free to circulate this message to whoever may be
interested (with my "apology for multiple copies").
==============================================================================
4) mod_caml 0.4 & continuing dynlink problems
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Richard Jones announced and asked:
On the links below you'll find mod_caml 0.4. You'll also need the
associated patch against the clean ocaml 3.06 tree.
The version still doesn't work. This time, following advice from David
Gurr, I put the C primitives from the .so file into the table of
primitives (by hacking Dynlink again to call Dynlink.set_prim_table).
OCaml now recognises them but doesn't bind them to the correct values.
I can't understand how this binding happens with external references.
I tried breakpointing various obvious candidates, eg.,
dynlink.c:lookup_primitive, build_primitive_table; but these never
seem to be called as far as I can see.
The result is that when the code tries to call the external C function
mod_caml_request_uri, it jumps to an apparently random address and
crashes.
Ideas?
http://www.annexia.org/tmp/ocaml-3.06.dynlink.patch2
http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mod_caml-0.4.tar.gz
** Daniel Bünzli said and Richard Jones answered:
> If you consult the humps, you will see that a mod_caml was already
> developed (I never used it), you can find it there
>
> http://www.slacky.de/docs/development/download.html
I've already looked at this code. It doesn't allow you to access the
full Apache API. This is the purpose of mod_caml.
==============================================================================
Using folding to read the cwn in vim 6+
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a quick trick to help you read this CWN if you are viewing it using
vim (version 6 or greater).
:set foldmethod=expr
:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1
zM
If you know of a better way, please let me know.
==============================================================================
Old cwn
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you happen to miss a CWN, you can send me a message
(alan.schmitt@inria.fr) and I'll mail it to you, or go take a look at
the archive (http://pauillac.inria.fr/~aschmitt/cwn/). If you also wish
to receive it every week by mail, just tell me so.
==============================================================================
Alan Schmitt