Hello

Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of July 22 to August 26, 2008.

Sorry for the long hiatus. I have moved in and I'm now ready to get back to caml news. Time to catch up!

1. Understanding Monads
2. newbie ocaml and delimited continuations
3. 'Nondeterministic' evaluation wrt exceptions
4. Released Mikmatch 1.0.0 and Micmatch 1.0.0
5. OCaml and Matlab
6. pa_where 0.4 : backward declarations
7. [camlp4] expr_of_string, string_of_expr functions exist?
8. virt-mem 0.2.8 has been released
9. native vs bytecode
10. Value shadowing
11. Opis, reliable distributed systems in OCaml
12. bitstring mailing list
13. Developing Chamo

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/03e42ce999db1dd3#

Two key points that helped me:

* Monads help to separate some plumbing from your code.

* Monads provide a way to abstract code over some "let" construct.

I will note that specific "let" construct "let!", it's somewhat
like the do-notation but more atomic.

Monads also come with "return", but that's not the essence of them.

Think about that example:

 val div : int -> int -> int option
 val square : int -> option

 let f x y =
   match div x y with
   | None -> None (* here 'y' was equal to 0 *)
   | Some z ->
       match square z with
       | None -> None
       | Some x2 -> Some x2

In the previous example the plumbing is error handling (where errors are
represented by None), and the "let!" construct is:

 let! x = e1 in e2   ===>   match e1 with None -> None | Some x -> e2

And "return" is "Some".

Another similar example:

 type ('a,'b) either = Left of 'a | Right of 'b

 val div : int -> int -> (string, int) either
 val square : int -> (string, int) either

 let f x y =
   match div x y with
   | Left error_msg -> Left error_msg
   | Right z ->
       match square z with
       | Left error_msg -> Left error_msg
       | Right x2 -> Right x2

Here the plumbing is still there for "error handling", but is somewhat
different. The "let!" construct is:

 let! x = e1 in e2   ===>   match e1 with Left m -> Left m | Right x -> e2

And "return" is "Right".

Finally one could have used the "let!" construct
abstractly (and also "return").

 let f x y =
   let! z = div x y in
   let! x2 = square z in
   return x2

One can obtain the two previous versions by choosing
which "let!"/"return" we want, namely choosing the monad.
			

Some months ago someone posted a comment on the Programming
Reddit that brilliantly summarises monads.  It's the best
intro I've read so far:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/info/64th1/comments/c02u9mb
			

You may want to take a look to 
http://cufp.galois.com/2007/slides/ChrisWaterson.ppt
for an actual use of monads in a concrete product.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/07b5c913607a7933#

> Is it likely that this package may be incorporated into a later official
> relase of ocaml (ie receive first class support ) ?. continuations would
> appear to offer considerable programming expressiveness even if not widely
> supported in other languages (cf scheme).

The library delimcc is a pure library in the sense it does not patch
OCaml in any way. Therefore, it does not have to be incorporated into
the official release of OCaml. There are many very useful OCaml
libraries (Core or Extlib to name a few) that will never be part of
the official release. Since Inria does not have many resources to
devote to OCaml, they rather concentrate on the compiler and the basic
run-time system, and leave the libraries to the
community. Incidentally, GHC Haskell system is being developed in a
similar fashion.

> And a very basic tech question - It is obviously necessary that the package
> runs as interpreted bytecode - so that the activation record of the
> function/closure may be saved/serialized off.

Although the current delimcc library does support bytecode only, that
is not the fundamental limitation. It is possible in principle to
capture and resume continuations in ocamlopt-compiled programs. That
is, however, quite more involved, requires the use of frame tables,
etc. There has not been much interest in ocamlopt-delimited
continuations to justify the development. 

Incidentally, a new version of the library
	http://okmij.org/ftp/packages/caml-shift.tar.gz
just has been released, with many optimizations reducing the size of
captured continuations. The original library was not optimized at all.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/e02b5d17b39f1e53#

Let's look at my OCaml program as a poset of function applications. 
Some its elements throw exceptions. 
I need to evaluate all applications except of those that 'Follow' 
exception-throwing ones. 
This 'Follow' corresponds to the ordering in my poset. 
Unfortunately standard tools allow only to do this with 'Follow' 
corresponding to some total order. 
Could you give me some advice how to evaluate really all applications 
that precede throwing an exception? 

---------- 
Full story 

I have many similar programs that do calculations for me. Some steps are 
very computationally heavy. Every such function do_heavy_thing starts 
another process (on other computer) and throws an exception that means 
"the result will be available later". Everything that relies on this 
result of do_heavy_thing cannot be evaluated. And it won't be because I 
don't catch the exception. 

So I run my programs repeatedly. I correct and extend them while 
heavy_thing is done somewhere else (usually for few days). 
do_heavy_thing checks for the result. If it's finished at the moment of 
execution, it downloads the data and returns. Then the data undergoes 
some cheap transformations and some next do_heavy_thing function can be 
called. 

Every time I execute the program I get some more useful output and 
"Fatal error: exception ..." message. So far this scheme worked very well. 

This is basically breaking the calculation at some point with respect to 
a total order (the order of source code). Some calculations should be 
done in parallel, since there are many of them. I solved this problem 
with run_many adapter: firstly collect a list of heavy calculations, 
then execute them as a one node in the total order of evaluation. 

Currently I hit the following problem: my new programs (call them 
'Calcs') are too complex to apply the evasion with run_many. So my 
latest calculations are done one-by-one. This is so bad, that I can 
spend several days in order to solve this in a systematical way. 

These Calcs are managed by other set of OCaml tools. I have complete 
control over all the code. The tools already do tiny changes to Calcs 
with simple string operations, not real syntax extension. I hope some 
witty preprocessor can help. 

I have no idea what code the syntax extension should produce. My first 
guess is to wrap everything in 
 type 'a wrapped = Exception | Value 'a 
and make all aplications evaluated. But this seems to be a big headache. 
Maybe this is well-known, already solved problem? Any ideas?
			

The wrapping you describe looks a lot like a monad, and your problem
definitely looks like having many (cooperative) threads, some of them needing
to be detached (because they are blocking).

You could have a look at http://ocsigen.org/lwt and adapt it to suit your
needs. Pay attention in particular to the detach() function.

Please, note I might be seeing monads and continuation-passing style
everywhere, since this is my current research topic.
			

Could you give me some advice how to evaluate really all applications
that precede throwing an exception?

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're trying to achieve, but I'm
reminded of "futures", a construct for parallel computation that
was popular in the Lisp world in the 80's.  The classic reference
is Halstead's Multilisp system:
  http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~fischer/cs538.s04/multilisp.pdf

In a nutshell, a future is like a lazy value, but the underlying
computation is evaluated speculatively in parallel with the main
program, rather than waiting until its value is needed as in the case
of lazy evaluation.
			

Let me show an example of what I exactly mean. I start with a code: 

1: let a = heavy 1 
2: let b = heavy 2 
3: let c = report (a + b) 
4: let d = heavy 4 
5: let e = heavy d 

Then I want to translate it automatically so that three applications of 
heavy are evaluated (lines 1, 2, 4). The addition a + b won't be 
evaluated untill a and b are successfully returned. 

It's easier to get only two heavy operations started at once: 

0: type 'a future_t = 'a Lazy.t 
1: let a = future heavy 1 
2: let b = future heavy 2 
3: let c = report ((force a) + (force b)) 
4: let d = future heavy 4 
5: let e = future heavy (force d) 

Computation of c hangs or throws an exception. Hence lines 4 an 5 are 
not executed. So I think I need some more invasive transformarion: 

0: type 'a future_t = 'a Lazy.t 
1: let a = future heavy 1 
2: let b = future heavy 2 
3: let c = lazy (report (force a) + (force b)) 
4: let d = future heavy 4 
5: let e = future heavy (force d) 
6: let _ = force c 

In this case we have a problem: line 5 throws an exception, so report in 
line 3 is not executed even if first two heavy operations are finished. 
The function report could even contain some other heavy operations that 
need to be started as soon as possible. 

So I can conctruct a tree of deferred computations, but probably I can't 
force it to do as much as possible. Forcing is governed by total order. 
Let's consider: 

7: let f = foo (force c) (force e) 

If one of arguments fails first, the other is not forced. This is bad. 

So I go to the original idea: thread the exception across everything. 
Wrap with variant instead of Lazy.t. 

0: type 'a lifted_t = Exception | Value 'a 
1: let a = start heavy 1 
2: let b = start heavy 2 
3: let c = bind2 (fun a b -> return (report (a+b))) a b 
4: let d = start heavy 4 
5: let e = bind1 (fun d -> start heavy d) d 
7: let f = bind2 (fun c e -> return (foo c e)) c e 

Function 'start' starts calculation and returns Exception or returns 
Value result if it's available. 
bindX functions evaluate the function passed as a parameter if all 
arguments are Values. 

Is is easy to lift every heavy call to 'start heavy arg arg arg ...' - 
since in any case I have to distinguish heavy functions manually. 
I need to decide about granularity of bindX incrustation. I can have 
some modules marked as 'nondeterministic' and leave the other ones 
untouched. 
I could wrap into lifted_t all single values in 'nondeterministic' 
modules. This would mean placing bindX for every integer addition, every 
string concatenation... 

I need rules: where should I place bindX and return in the original 
code. At the moment I don't know. 

I have looked at the Lwt library - as far as I understand in my case the 
idea boils down to threading something across all expressions.
			

You may want to have a look to 
http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2007/08/06/a-monad-tutorial-for-ocaml/ 
especially the "Russian Nesting Doll Monads" section for ideas.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/b46ad785eeff71e1#

I am pleased to announce the availability of Micmatch for the new Camlp4. The
new package is called "Mikmatch", with a K. "Micmatch" with a C refers to the
original implementation which now uses Camlp5.

   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/micmatch.html

or  GODI if you want to jump directly to the installation.


Micmatch is a Camlp4 syntax extension that allows to use regexps in match-with
constructs. Compilation of the underlying PCRE or Str regexp is done
transparently, just once. The syntax of the regexps is reminiscent of
ocamllex. For those who are not familiar with ocamllex, this syntax is very
OCaml-friendly and in particular avoids backslash headaches.


This is a double announcement:

micmatch-1.0.0 (stable except for possibly some packaging issues):
 Legacy implementation, slightly modified to work with
 Camlp5 (thanks to John Gregorski for the patch).

mikmatch-1.0.0 (beta quality):
 Partial reimplementation that supports Camlp4 3.10 aka the
 "new Camlp4". Currently there is no toplevel support.
 For details on the changes, see
 http://martin.jambon.free.fr/mikmatch-changes.txt


Have fun, program safely, and please report problems to

 micmatch@googlegroups.com
 (archive at http://groups.google.com/group/micmatch )


Thanks to the OCamlForge team for providing free and worry-free hosting.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/78b120aebfae5205#

Here is an updated version for ocaml >= 3.10 with *Camlp5* :

http://gforge.inria.fr/frs/download.php/4062/ocamlmex-2.1.0.tar.gz

(from http://ocamlmex.gforge.inria.fr/)

It has been tested with Matlab 2007b, 2008a and Octave on a Ubuntu Hardy

(Ocaml 3.10.1, Camlp5 5.04 (transitional mode), Octave 3.0)

For any trouble with this, please mail me directly.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/9f98fdc2278eb869#

mfp and I are pleased to announce the first public release of
pa_where, a camlp4 extension enabling backward declarations. The
"where" keyword, available in the revised syntax, and one of the
truly missed Caml-light friends, is back.

The syntax, however, is slightly different from the usual one :
"where" should be followed by another declarative keyword, such
as "let" : a where let a = b

It is possible to use the "where let" form inside expressions,
and the "where val" form at toplevel (structure items). Having
a different syntaxic form for toplevel and local declarations is
not the classical syntax standard, but was needed for
disambiguation issues.

It is however possible to use the good old "where a = b" syntax :
in absence of any declarative keyword, the "let" keyword is used
as default.

The revised syntax "where" is restricted because of the "dangling
and" issue. pa_where has no such restriction (what's one more
ambiguity in the classical syntax anyway ?). Here are the two
ambiguous cases :
   a where b where c => (a where b) where c
   let a = b where c and d => let a = (b where c and d)

It would be possible to extend the backward declarations to other
constructions such as "where module" or "where type". If you see
any use for it, do not hesitate to ask for the feature or send
a patch.

The final syntax, wich I think is a good compromise, is the
result of a debate on the #ocaml IRC channel (Freenode). If you
are about to write a syntax extension yourself, you should really
consider discussing your syntax considerations there (or maybe on
the mailing-list ?) : it is amazing how helpful such a debate can
be on a so subjective question.

Thanks in advance for any testing, comment, criticism, request or
patch.


URL : http://bluestorm.info/camlp4/pa_where/list.php

Available archives (test and META files included) :
- http://bluestorm.info/camlp4/pa_where/pa_where-0.4-.tar.gz
- http://bluestorm.info/camlp4/pa_where/pa_where-0.4-.zip

Highlighted HTML source for online reading :
- http://bluestorm.info/camlp4/pa_where/pa_where.ml.html
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/f35452d085654bd6#

> Maybe a simple question, but does camlp4 have functions to turn
> expr and patt AST structures to and from strings?

I don't know about the new camlp4, but in the old one the code looked
something like this (where my AST is a list of str_item-s):

open Pcaml

let ast_to_strings ast =
 List.map (function str_item -> string_of pr_str_item str_item) ast
			

Parsing:

 open Camlp4.PreCast

 let loc = Loc.ghost;;

 Syntax.AntiquotSyntax.parse_expr loc "x = 1";;

 Syntax.AntiquotSyntax.parse_patt loc "Failure _";;

Printing:  I do not know a way to print to a string, only to a file.
I guess this asymmetry is due to the fact that a string output was
never needed... (but it would be useful to me too!)  Moreover, you can
only print str_item's, so you have to wrap your expr and patt.  E.g.

 let e = <:expr< 1 + 1 >>;;

 Printers.OCaml.print_implem ~output_file:"/tmp/o.ml" <:str_item< $exp: e$ >>;;
 (* will print
 let _ = 1 + 1;;
 *)

 Printers.OCaml.print_implem ~output_file:"/tmp/o.ml"
   (let _loc = Ast.loc_of_expr e in Ast.StExp(_loc, e));;
 (* will print
 1 + 1;;
 (but I do not know whether this is a feature!) *)
			

One way to do it is to use the Camlp4.Printers module. To illustrate the idea,
here's a complete working program that prints out all expressions found in a
file.

open Camlp4.PreCast
open Syntax

(* Instantiate the module that allows us to print AST values.
  This gives us an object with methods `expr', `patt', etc.,
  each with type `Format.formatter -> t -> unit'. *)
let printer = let module P = Camlp4.Printers.OCaml.Make(Syntax)
             in new P.printer ()

(* Transform a formatter function into a to_string function. *)
let format_to_string (f : Format.formatter -> 'a -> unit) (v : 'a) : string =
 let buf = Buffer.create 128 in
 let fmt = Format.formatter_of_buffer buf in
 let () = f fmt v in
 let () = Format.pp_print_flush fmt () in
    Buffer.contents buf

(* Some to_string functions for particular AST types. *)
let expr_of_string : Ast.expr -> string = format_to_string printer#expr
let patt_of_string : Ast.patt -> string = format_to_string printer#patt

(* A "filter" that prints out expressions encountered in the AST (top-down). *)
let print_stuff = object
 inherit Ast.map as super
 method expr e =
    let () = print_endline ("expr: "^ expr_of_string e) in
       super#expr e
end

(* Register the filter with camlp4 *)
let () = AstFilters.register_str_item_filter print_stuff#str_item


Compile:
  ocamlc -c -I +camlp4 print.ml
Run:
  camlp4of print.cmo file.ml
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/46f6603351a7b3b4#

[Perhaps people wonder what I do at Red Hat.  Copied below is an
announcement of some virtualization management tools that we wrote in
OCaml.  This might be interesting to people on this list because it
heavily uses DSLs written in camlp4 and other camlp4 features such as
"Reflective OCaml".  It's also a real world program specifically
designed to be used by system administrators who, frankly, won't care
about implementation details but will only care that it works.  If you
want to find out about the many other management tools I'm writing
please go to http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/  As with all Red Hat
software, this is Free and open source, and I'd like to encourage
anyone to contribute back patches, suggestions and documentation.]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm pleased to announce the latest release of the virt-mem tools,
version 0.2.8.

These are tools for system administrators which let you find things
like kernel messages, process lists and network information of your
guests.

For example:

 virt-uname
   'uname' command, shows OS version, architecture, etc.
 virt-dmesg
   'dmesg' command, shows kernel messages
 virt-ps
   'ps' command, shows process list 

Nothing needs to be installed in the guest for this to work, and the
tools are specifically designed to allow easy scripting and
integration with databases and monitoring systems.

Source is available from the web page here:

 http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/

The latest version (0.2.8) reworks the internals substantially so that
we have direct access to basically any kernel structure, and this will
allow us to quickly add the remaining features that people have asked
for (memory usage information, lists of network interfaces and so on).

As usual, patches, feedback, suggestions etc. are very welcome!

Binaries will be available in Fedora 10 (Rawhide) at some point soon.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/d30afbc4d16299f8#

> - is it possible to dynamically load bytecode libraries into a bytecode 
program? 

Yes: 
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/manual041.html 

> - is it possible to dynamically load native libraries into a native program? 

This will be possible in the next release of OCaml (3.11). The API is 
the same as for bytecode (Dynlink module), although the model is a 
little bit different (specific linking phase to produce dynlinkable units). 

> - is it possible to dynamically load bytecode libraries into a native 
program? 

 > - is it possible to dynamically load native libraries into a bytecode 
program? 

No.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/4adaa33c66747856#

Here is a draft of camlp4 extension warning on value shadowing :
  http://bluestorm.info/camlp4/dev/pf_shadow/list.php

You can use it as a preprocessor to your source file, and it will raise
warnings on value shadowing.
For example (more examples in the test.ml file), your input gives the warning :
<W> File "input.ml", line 4, characters 6-8: shadowing binding 'xs' from File "input.ml", line 2, characters 8-10

Recursive bindings are handled, but classes, types and modules are not : it is
a reasonable proof of concept, and if somebody is interested in more
exhaustiveness, i (or whoever) could probably extend it easily.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/793cf2291e975233#

After having delayed this announce for months, I think that Opis is
now mature enough to be publicly released. The literate code and a
technical report are available here:

http://perso.eleves.bretagne.ens-cachan.fr/~dagand/opis/

---------------------------
What Opis is about ?
---------------------------

Opis is a toolkit for large-scale distributed system programming. It
aims at easing the development of complex and reliable distributed
systems by:
  - embedding a domain-specific language (EDSL) in OCaml: hence
offering a reactive, dataflow-oriented programming style while not
reinventing the wheel (type-checker, efficient code generation, ...))
  - assisting the developer with powerful, integrated tools: network
simulator, debugger, model-checker and performance profiler
  - working with purely-functional constructs: therefore lowering the
barrier to certify critical parts of the distributed system in a
theorem prover

----------------------
Technical details:
----------------------

The EDSL is based on the Arrow abstraction
[http://www.haskell.org/arrows/]. First, the developer defines some
pure functions, then abstracts them in the Arrow world and finally
wires them together using the Arrow combinators. The resulting
function is termed an "event function": it receives input events from
the network, the timer or the user interfaces and reacts with output
events.

Then, these output events are interpreted by the "launcher" subsystem.
For instance, the event function might ask to "Send( ip_x , TCP , data
)". Thus, the Network Launcher opens a TCP connection to "ip_x",
marshals "data" to a string and finally sends it.

Internally, the Arrow combinators build a Mealy automaton out of the
user-defined pure functions. Interestingly, Mealy automata has been
introduced and used by Lamport for decades to describe distributed
systems [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_machine_replication].

Hence, there already exists some encouraging, successful formalization
of Mealy-based systems [http://coq.inria.fr/contribs/fairisle.html].
We are currently experimenting with Coq to completely develop the
event functions in Coq (and to prove non trivial properties about the
behavior of the resulting distributed system).


Beyond an EDSL, Opis also provides some useful tools to speed-up the
development and deployment of event functions. Hence, given an event
function and without any modification, we can:

  - deploy it on a real network
  - simulate a network executing the event function, to test the
behavior of the system "in the large"
  - debug a network of nodes running the event function, to inspect
the system "in the small", with forward and backward execution steps,
state inspection, ...
  - model-check the distributed system against safety properties,
featuring a dynamic partial-order reduction mode that avoids the usual
combinatorial explosion in most systems
   - performance-debug the pure functions, by measuring their
processing time and inferring their (algorithmic) complexity


Finally, by using OCaml and staying in the purely-functional world, we
benefit from:

   - OCaml excellent performances (both on the computational side and
on the networking side) as well as its thoroughly tested type-checker
   - the "code export" capability of theorem provers (Isabelle, Coq,
....): we have been able to certify critical code in Isabelle, export
the corresponding code and integrates it smoothly in an existing
system
   - the usual benefit of functional programming: easier (informal)
reasoning and testing


--------------------------
Acknowledgements
--------------------------

I would like to thanks Zheng Li, Oleg Kiselyov and Jacques Garrigue
for their help on this list to design an efficient Arrow instance.

At this point of this long mail, I think I must also thank the reader
that have bravely read up to here ;-)
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/51544aa549645d7e#

We've set up a mailing list to continue discussion of bitstring.  It's
not just for developers though, if you'd like to ask user-oriented
questions too we'd be glad to help.

http://groups.google.com/group/bitstring

----------------------------------------

http://code.google.com/p/bitstring/

The ocaml-bitstring project adds Erlang-style bitstrings and matching
over bitstrings as a syntax extension and library for OCaml.

(This project was formerly known as "bitmatch").

You can use this module to both parse and generate binary formats,
files and protocols.

Bitstring handling is added as primitives to the language, making it
exceptionally simple to use and very powerful.
			

Archive: http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/d8a0f5f28b9c55b0#

Indeed it's a lot of work and I wish I had more time to work on it.
Here are some comments about my experience developping Chamo[1].

It's important for me to be able to change the editor/IDE I use without
having to change the build process or the organisation of the source files.
It's kind of easy to force the developper to use some tools and the way to
use them, saying "If you use my wonderful editor, you have to put your code
here, use this tool and not this other, etc.". The hard part is to keep
flexibility and so to foresee what must be customizable by the user. And
this flexibility is required to be able to contribute on projects using
different organisations and build processes.

For this reason, I never developped a "project manager" in Cameleon,
because I did not want to put my includes and other flags (for example) in
a specific file and become "cameleon-dependent" (and so for the possible
contributors). So I keep on writing Makefiles.

(Chamo is part of Cameleon. Cameleon aimed at being an IDE, with
documentation browsing, version control, etc., and using Chamo as
default source code editor)

So my recent efforts were on Chamo, a source code editor, like emacs but
written in ocaml and using ocaml rather than elisp to write configuration
and extensions. Again, the difficulty is to foresee what the user will want
to change because in ocaml a function f cannot be *redefined*: it is
possible to define *another* function f, but functions using the first
definition will continue to use the first definition, not the new one. So
I added "commands" in Chamo, like shell commands. These are only names, and
the user can change the ocaml function associated to these names. This
allows the user to write the ocaml code which calls its favorite tools and
to for example bind this code to the keyboard shortcuts he wants (see
examples at [3]).

The GUI represents a big part of the work, even using an existing source
code editor widget (gtksourceview). There is a lot of information
to keep and display, a lot of things possibly happening. Moreover, as
soon as there is interaction with the user, error handling is required at
every line...

For ocaml-specific aspects:
- Chamo uses .annot files to display type information (Alt-t),
- ocamlbuild is supported,
- errors messages in compilation processes (ocamlbuild, make or any command)
are parsed and the cursor is positionned at the location of the error.

So I already use Chamo for my daily work (development, edition of text
files). What's missing now is access to more information like location of
definitions, completion and so on. I'm waiting for the result of
ocamlwizard[3] to see how to use these tools in Chamo to provide these
missing features.

Since these tools will surely need some information about compilation
flags, there are two solutions:
1. Add a way to indicate these flags to Chamo/Cameleon, but keep this way
flexible so that any user can import them from any other location
(makefile, etc.)
2. Use "dump" files to store the results of these tools and Makefile targets
to produce them (that the way ocamldoc is used in Cameleon for browsing
documentation)

Regards,

Maxence

[1] http://home.gna.org/cameleon/chamo.en.html
[2] http://home.gna.org/cameleon/snippets.en.html
[3] http://osp.janestcapital.com/files/ocamlwizard.pdf
			

> > So I already use Chamo for my daily work (development, edition of text
> > files). What's missing now is access to more information like location of
> > definitions, completion and so on.
> 
> You've looked at cmigrep?
> 
>  http://caml.inria.fr/cgi-bin/hump.en.cgi?contrib=560

No. I just donwloaded it and indeed it could be used from chamo to provide
some more features in a flexible way.

Thanks !
			

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

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Alan Schmitt