Hello
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of July 12 to 19, 2011.
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00085.html
Xavier Clerc announced:
This post announces the 1.0-beta release of the Argot project, whose
goal is to provide enhanced HTML generator for ocamldoc, released
under the GPL v3.
Home page: http://argot.x9c.fr
Main changes since 1.0-alpha:
- switch to OCaml 3.12.1
- support for folding
- enhanced support for tables (horizontal span, check for
well-formedness)
- @copyright and @license tags for legal information
- '-argot-version' command-line switch
- tests for base64 encoding
- support for ocamlfind has been fixed
- support for use as native plugin has been fixed
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00086.html
Xavier Clerc announced:
This post announces the 1.0-beta release of the Mascot project, whose
goal is to provide a style-checker for Objective Caml sources,
released under the GPL v3.
Home page: http://mascot.x9c.fr
Main changes since 1.0-alpha:
- switch to OCaml 3.12.1
- revamped configure/build system
- support for checks based on annotation files
- support for checks using a state (for cross-file checks)
- new code checks: 'empty_for', 'empty_try', and 'empty_while'
- new code check: 'deprecated' to detect deprecated elements
- new code check: 'tuple_size' to detect lenghty tuples
- strict mode for documentation checks (rejects empty comments)
- bug #66: allowed modules in 'code.open' check
- bug #67: detection of useless parentheses in 'if', 'when', 'while', and
'for' constructs ('code.code_useless_external_parentheses')
- bug #68: 'code.physical_comparisons' check added
- bug #70: support for preprocessors
- bug #71: detection of textual code duplication ('code.textual_duplicate')
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00087.html
Xavier Clerc announced:
This post announces the 2.0-alpha release of the Barista project,
whose goal is to provide a library for Java class file construction
and a Java [dis]assembler, released under the LGPLv3.
Home page: http://barista.x9c.fr
Main changes since 1.4:
- update for Objective Caml 3.12.1
- update for Camomile 0.8.3
- new build system (ocamlbuild-based)
- reorganization of 'src' directory
- support for Unicode in 'src/utf8' directory
- major refactoring of code (with impact on API)
- executable names changed to 'barista.byte' and 'barista.native'
- peephole optimizations
- optimization of stack frames
- optimization of exception tables
- optimization of 'transitive' jumps
- new '-optimize' command-line switch to enable peephole/jump optimizations
- support for 'invodynamic' (JSR 292)
- preliminary support for type annotations (JSR 308)
- preliminary support for Java modules (project Jigsaw / JSR 294)
- support for 'package-info' and 'module-info' class files
- support for Java serialization protocol (version 2 only)
- new implementation for i/o operations
- improved manual
- Java API has been removed
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00088.html
Sylvain Le Gall announced:
A random number generator compatible with standard library Random
module (pre OCaml 3.12).
It contains C code to speed up generation and a function to skip a lot of
numbers at once. Benchmarks show a 3 fold increase in speed for generating
random numbers.
This library only contains what I need, so it maybe incomplete for
you, contact me if you want more functions.
OASIS page:
http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/view/ocaml-fastrandom/0.0.2
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00089.html
Sylvain Le Gall announced:
libarchive is a C library for reading and writing tar, cpio, zip, ISO, and
other archive formats. This library is its OCaml bindings.
* Reads a variety of formats, including tar, pax, cpio, zip, xar, lha, ar,
cab, mtree, and ISO images.
* Writes tar, pax, cpio, zip, xar, ar, ISO, mtree, and shar archives.
* Full automatic format detection when reading archives, including
compressed archives.
[libarchive website](http://code.google.com/p/libarchive/)
This library is developped in lazy mode: I only implement what I use. So
this version mainly support read operationsi. Don't hesitate to contact me if
you think there is some great libarchive functions not here.
OASIS webpage:
http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/view/ocaml-archive/2.8.4%2B1
Archive: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/arc/caml-list/2011-07/msg00093.html
Ashish Agarwal announced:
An effort to build a new modern website for the OCaml community was
announced at the User Meeting in April. We now have a project on the
forge and welcome you to join. There are several ways to be involved:
Join the mailing list [1] for developers, which will be used to
discuss implementation of the site, including coding matters and
decisions about content. Discussions requiring input from the broader
community will still be posted to the main list.
Become a developer by clicking the "Request to join" link
[2]. Developers are those who will actively write code for the site,
and at first developers will also be writing the bulk of the
content. Eventually, we hope the community will add content directly
on the site via wiki like features. Our plan is to implement the site
in Ocsigen, so this is a great opportunity to learn about this
exciting new set of tools for OCaml.
Suggest ideas to the development team. We are maintaing an ideas file
[3] listing our desired features. Please review it, and give us your
feedback.
[1] https://lists.forge.ocamlcore.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/ocamlweb-devel
[2] https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/ocamlweb/
[3] https://forge.ocamlcore.org/scm/viewvc.php/trunk/IDEAS.org?view=markup&root=ocamlweb
Thanks to Alp Mestan, we now include in the Caml Weekly News the links to the
recent posts from the ocamlcore planet blog at http://planet.ocamlcore.org/.
Barista : 2.0-alpha:
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=802
Mascot: 1.0-beta:
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=801
OCaml FastRandom:
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/fastrandom/
Extprocs in OCaml:
http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/extprocs-in-ocaml/
If you happen to miss a CWN, you can send me a message and I'll mail it to you, or go take a look at the archive or the RSS feed of the archives.
If you also wish to receive it every week by mail, you may subscribe online.