Hello
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of July 17 to 24, 2012.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-07/msg00144.html
Damien Doligez announced:
The release of OCaml version 4.00.0 is imminent. We have
created a release candidate for your testing pleasure. Please
download the sources, compile, install, and test your favourite
software with it. Then let me know whether it works for you.
We want to know about any show-stopping bugs, especially in the
compilation and installation phases.
This release candidate is available as source code at this
address: http://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-4.00/
Happy hacking,
-- Damien Doligez for the OCaml team.
OCaml 4.00.0:
-------------
(Changes that can break existing programs are marked with a "*")
- The official name of the language is now OCaml.
Language features:
- Added Generalized Abstract Data Types (GADTs) to the language.
See chapter "Language extensions" of the reference manual for documentation.
- It is now possible to omit type annotations when packing and unpacking
first-class modules. The type-checker attempts to infer it from the context.
Using the -principal option guarantees forward compatibility.
- New (module M) and (module M : S) syntax in patterns, for immediate
unpacking of a first-class module.
Compilers:
- Revised simplification of let-alias (PR#5205, PR#5288)
- Better reporting of compiler version mismatch in .cmi files
* Warning 28 is now enabled by default.
- New option -absname to use absolute paths in error messages
- Optimize away compile-time beta-redexes, e.g. (fun x y -> e) a b.
- Added option -bin-annot to dump the AST with type annotations.
- Added lots of new warnings about unused variables, opens, fields,
constructors, etc.
* New meaning for warning 7: it is now triggered when a method is overridden
with the "method" keyword. Use "method!" to avoid the warning.
Native-code compiler:
- Optimized handling of partially-applied functions (PR#5287)
- Small improvements in code generated for array bounds checks (PR#5345,
PR#5360).
* New ARM backend (PR#5433):
. Supports both Linux/EABI (armel) and Linux/EABI+VFPv3 (armhf).
. Added support for the Thumb-2 instruction set with average code size
savings of 28%.
. Added support for position-independent code, natdynlink, profiling and
exception backtraces.
- Generation of CFI information, and filename/line number debugging (with -g)
annotations, enabling in particular precise stack backtraces with
the gdb debugger. Currently supported for x86 32-bits and 64-bits only.
(PR#5487)
- New tool: ocamloptp, the equivalent of ocamlcp for the native-code compiler.
OCamldoc:
- PR#5645: ocamldoc doesn't handle module/type substitution in signatures
- PR#5544: improve HTML output (less formatting in html code)
- PR#5522: allow refering to record fields and variant constructors
- fix PR#5419 (error message in french)
- fix PR#5535 (no cross ref to class after dump+load)
* Use first class modules for custom generators, to be able to
load various plugins incrementally adding features to the current
generator
* PR#5507: Use Location.t structures for locations.
- fix: do not keep code when not told to keep code.
Standard library:
- Added float functions "hypot" and "copysign" (PR#3806, PR#4752, PR#5246)
* Arg: options with empty doc strings are no longer included in the usage
string
(PR#5437)
- Array: faster implementations of "blit", "copy", "sub", "append" and
"concat"
(PR#2395, PR#2787, PR#4591)
* Hashtbl:
. Statistically-better generic hash function based on Murmur 3 (PR#5225)
. Fixed behavior of generic hash function w.r.t. -0.0 and NaN (PR#5222)
. Added optional "random" parameter to Hashtbl.create to randomize
collision patterns and improve security (PR#5572, CVE-2012-0839)
. Added "randomize" function and "R" parameter to OCAMLRUNPARAM
to turn randomization on by default (PR#5572, CVE-2012-0839)
. Added new functorial interface "MakeSeeded" to support randomization
with user-provided seeded hash functions.
. Install new header <caml/hash.h> for C code.
- Filename: on-demand (lazy) initialization of the PRNG used by "temp_file".
- Marshal: marshalling of function values (flag Marshal.Closures) now
also works for functions that come from dynamically-loaded modules (PR#5215)
- Random:
. More random initialization (Random.self_init()), using /dev/urandom
when available (e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, Solaris)
* Faster implementation of Random.float (changes the generated sequences)
- Scanf: new function "unescaped" (PR#3888)
- Set and Map: more efficient implementation of "filter" and "partition"
- String: new function "map" (PR#3888)
Installation procedure:
- Compiler internals are now installed in `ocamlc -where`/compiler-libs.
The files available there include the .cmi interfaces for all compiler
modules, plus the following libraries:
ocamlcommon.cma/.cmxa modules common to ocamlc, ocamlopt, ocaml
ocamlbytecomp.cma/.cmxa modules for ocamlc and ocaml
ocamloptcomp.cma/.cmxa modules specific to ocamlopt
ocamltoplevel.cma modules specific to ocaml
(PR#1804, PR#4653, frequently-asked feature).
* Some .cmi for toplevel internals that used to be installed in
`ocamlc -where` are now to be found in `ocamlc -where`/compiler-libs.
Add "-I +compiler-libs" where needed.
* toplevellib.cma is no longer installed because subsumed by
ocamlcommon.cma ocamlbytecomp.cma ocamltoplevel.cma
- Added a configuration option (-with-debug-runtime) to compile and install
a debug version of the runtime system, and a compiler option
(-runtime-variant) to select the debug runtime.
Bug Fixes:
- PR#1643: functions of the Lazy module whose named started with 'lazy_' have
been deprecated, and new ones without the prefix added
- PR#3571: in Bigarrays, call msync() before unmapping to commit changes
- PR#4292: various documentation problems
- PR#4511, PR#4838: local modules remove polymorphism
* PR#4549: Filename.dirname is not handling multiple / on Unix
- PR#4688: (Windows) special floating-point values aren't converted to strings
correctly
- PR#4697: Unix.putenv leaks memory on failure
- PR#4705: camlp4 does not allow to define types with `True or `False
- PR#4746: wrong detection of stack overflows in native code under Linux
- PR#4869: rare collisions between assembly labels for code and data
- PR#4880: "assert" constructs now show up in the exception stack backtrace
- PR#4892: Array.set could raise "out of bounds" before evaluating 3rd arg
- PR#4937: camlp4 incorrectly handles optional arguments if 'option' is
redefined
- PR#5024: camlp4r now handles underscores in irrefutable pattern matching of
records
- PR#5064, PR#5485: try to ensure that 4K words of stack are available
before calling into C functions, raising a Stack_overflow exception
otherwise. This reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of
segmentation faults due to stack overflow in C code
- PR#5073: wrong location for 'Unbound record field label' error
- PR#5084: sub-sub-module building fails for native code compilation
- PR#5120: fix the output function of Camlp4.Debug.formatter
- PR#5131: compilation of custom runtime with g++ generates lots of warnings
- PR#5137: caml-types-explore does not work
- PR#5159: better documentation of type Lexing.position
- PR#5171: Map.join does more comparisons than needed
- PR#5176: emacs mode: stack overflow in regexp matcher
- PR#5179: port OCaml to mingw-w64
- PR#5211: updated Genlex documentation to state that camlp4 is mandatory for
'parser' keyword and associated notation
- PR#5214: ocamlfind plugin invokes 'cut' utility
- PR#5218: use $(MAKE) instead of "make" in Makefiles
- PR#5224: confusing error message in non-regular type definition
- PR#5231: camlp4: fix parsing of <:str_item< type t = $x$ >>
- PR#5233: finaliser on weak array gives dangling pointers (crash)
- PR#5238, PR#5277: Sys_error when getting error location
- PR#5261, PR#5497: Ocaml source-code examples are not "copy-paste-able"
* PR#5279: executable name is not initialized properly in caml_startup_code
- PR#5290: added hash functions for channels, nats, mutexes, conditions
- PR#5295: OS threads: problem with caml_c_thread_unregister()
- PR#5301: camlp4r and exception equal to another one with parameters
- PR#5305: prevent ocamlbuild from complaining about links to _build/
- PR#5306: comparing to Thread.self() raises exception at runtime
- PR#5309: Queue.add is not thread/signal safe
- PR#5310: Ratio.create_ratio/create_normalized_ratio have misleading names
- PR#5311: better message for warning 23
* PR#5312: command-line arguments @reponsefile auto-expansion feature
removed from the Windows OCaml runtime, to avoid conflicts with "-w @..."
- PR#5313: ocamlopt -g misses optimizations
- PR#5316: objinfo now shows ccopts/ccobjs/force_link when applicable
- PR#5318: segfault on stack overflow when reading marshaled data
- PR#5319: %r11 clobbered by Lswitch in Windows AMD64 native-code compilation
- PR#5322: type abbreviations expanding to a universal type variable
- PR#5325: (Windows) blocked Unix.recv in one thread blocks Unix.send in
another thread
- PR#5328: under Windows, Unix.select leaves sockets in non-blocking mode
- PR#5330: thread tag with '.top' and '.inferred.mli' targets
- PR#5331: ocamlmktop is not always a shell script
- PR#5335: Unix.environment segfaults after a call to clearenv
- PR#5338: sanitize.sh has windows style end-of-lines (mingw)
- PR#5343: ocaml -rectypes is unsound wrt module subtyping
- PR#5344: some predefined exceptions need special printing
- PR#5349: Hashtbl.replace uses new key instead of reusing old key
- PR#5356: ocamlbuild handling of 'predicates' for ocamlfind
- PR#5364: wrong compilation of "((val m : SIG1) : SIG2)"
- PR#5370: ocamldep omits filename in syntax error message
- PR#5374: camlp4 creates wrong location for type definitions
- PR#5380: strange sscanf input segfault
- PR#5382: EOPNOTSUPP and ENOTSUPP different on exotic platforms
- PR#5383: build failure in Win32/MSVC
- PR#5387: camlp4: str_item and other syntactic elements with Nils are
not very usable
- PR#5389: compaction sometimes leaves a very large heap
- PR#5393: fails to build from source on GNU/kFreeBSD because of -R link
option
- PR#5394: documentation for -dtypes is missing in manpage
- PR#5397: Filename.temp_dir_name should be mutable
- PR#5410: fix printing of class application with Camlp4
- PR#5416: (Windows) Unix.(set|clear)_close_on_exec now preserves blocking
mode
- PR#5435: ocamlbuild does not find .opt executables on Windows
- PR#5436: update object ids on unmarshaling
- PR#5442: camlp4: quotation issue with strings
- PR#5453: configure doesn't find X11 under Ubuntu/MultiarchSpec
- PR#5461: Double linking of bytecode modules
- PR#5463: Bigarray.*.map_file fail if empty array is requested
- PR#5465: increase stack size of ocamlopt.opt for windows
- PR#5469: private record type generated by functor loses abbreviation
- PR#5475: Wrapper script for interpreted LablTk wrongly handles command line
parameters
- PR#5476: bug in native code compilation of let rec on float arrays
- PR#5477: use pkg-config to configure graphics on linux
- PR#5481: update camlp4 magic numbers
- PR#5482: remove bashism in test suite scripts
- PR#5495: camlp4o dies on infix definition (or)
- PR#5498: Unification with an empty object only checks the absence of
the first method
- PR#5503: error when ocamlbuild is passed an absolute path as build directory
- PR#5509: misclassification of statically-allocated empty array that
falls exactly at beginning of an otherwise unused data page.
- PR#5510: ocamldep has duplicate -ml{,i}-synonym options
- PR#5511: in Bigarray.reshape, unwarranted limitation on new array
dimensions.
- PR#5513: Int64.div causes floating point exception (ocamlopt, x86)
- PR#5516: in Bigarray C stubs, use C99 flexible array types if possible
- PR#5518: segfault with lazy empty array
- PR#5531: Allow ocamlbuild to add ocamldoc flags through -docflag
and -docflags switches
- PR#5543: in Bigarray.map_file, try to avoid using lseek() when growing file
- PR#5538: combining -i and -annot in ocamlc
- PR#5648: (probably fixed) test failures in tests/lib-threads
- PR#5551: repeated calls to find_in_path degrade performance
- PR#5552: Mac OS X: unrecognized gcc option "-no-cpp-precomp"
- PR#5555: add Hashtbl.reset to resize the bucket table to its initial size
- PR#5560: incompatible type for tuple pattern with -principal
- PR#5575: Random states are not marshallable across architectures
- PR#5579: camlp4: when a plugin is loaded in the toplevel,
Token.Filter.define_filter has no effect before the first syntax error
- PR#5585: typo: "explicitely"
- PR#5587: documentation: "allows to" is not correct English
- PR#5593: remove C file when -output-obj fails
- PR#5597: register names for instrtrace primitives in embedded bytecode
- PR#5598: add backslash-space support in strings in ocamllex
- PR#5603: wrong .file debug info generated by ocamlopt -g
- PR#5604: fix permissions of files created by ocamlbuild itself
- PR#5610: new unmarshaler (from PR#5318) fails to freshen object identifiers
- PR#5614: add missing -linkall flag when compiling ocamldoc.opt
- PR#5616: move ocamlbuild documentation to the reference manual
- PR#5619: Uncaught CType.Unify exception in the compiler
- PR#5620: invalid printing of type manifest (camlp4 revised syntax)
- PR#5637: invalid printing of anonymous type parameters (camlp4 revised
syntax)
- PR#5643: issues with .cfi and .loc directives generated by ocamlopt -g
- PR#5644: Stream.count broken when used with Sapp or Slazy nodes
- PR#5647: Cannot use install_printer in debugger
- PR#5651: printer for abstract data type (camlp4 revised syntax)
- PR#5654: self pattern variable location tweak
- PR#5655: ocamlbuild doesn't pass cflags when building C stubs
- PR#5657: wrong error location for abbreviated record fields
- PR#5659: ocamlmklib -L option breaks with MSVC
- PR#5661: fixes for the test suite
- PR#5668: Camlp4 produces invalid syntax for "let _ = ..."
- PR#5671: initialization of compare_ext field in
caml_final_custom_operations()
- PR#5677: do not use "value" as identifier (genprintval.ml)
- PR#5687: dynlink broken when used from "output-obj" main program (bytecode)
- problem with printing of string literals in camlp4 (reported on caml-list)
- emacs mode: colorization of comments and strings now works correctly
- problem with forall and method (reported on caml-list on 2011-07-26)
- crash when using OCAMLRUNPARAM=a=X with invalid X (reported in private)
Feature wishes:
- PR#352: new option "-stdin" to make ocaml read stdin as a script
- PR#1164: better error message when mixing -a and .cmxa
- PR#1284: documentation: remove restriction on mixed streams
- PR#1496: allow configuring LIBDIR, BINDIR, and MANDIR relative to $(PREFIX)
- PR#1835: add Digest.from_hex
- PR#1898: toplevel: add option to suppress continuation prompts
- PR#4278: configure: option to disable "graph" library
- PR#4444: new String.trim function, removing leading and trailing whistespace
- PR#4549: make Filename.dirname/basename POSIX compliant
- PR#4830: add option -v to expunge.ml
- PR#4898: new Sys.big_endian boolean for machine endianness
- PR#4963, PR#5467: no extern "C" into ocaml C-stub headers
- PR#5199: tests are run only for bytecode if either native support is
missing,
or a non-empty value is set to "BYTECODE_ONLY" Makefile variable
- PR#5215: marshalling of dynlinked closure
- PR#5236: new '%revapply' primitive with the semantics 'revapply x f = f x',
and '%apply' with semantics 'apply f x = f x'.
- PR#5255: natdynlink detection on powerpc, hurd, sparc
- PR#5295: OS threads: problem with caml_c_thread_unregister()
- PR#5297: compiler now checks existence of builtin primitives
- PR#5329: (Windows) more efficient Unix.select if all fd's are sockets
- PR#5357: warning for useless open statements
- PR#5358: first class modules don't allow "with type" declarations for types
in sub-modules
- PR#5385: configure: emit a warning when MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET is set
- PR#5396: ocamldep: add options -sort, -all, and -one-line
- PR#5397: Filename.temp_dir_name should be mutable
- PR#5403: give better error message when emacs is not found in PATH
- PR#5411: new directive for the toplevel: #load_rec
- PR#5420: Unix.openfile share mode (Windows)
- PR#5421: Unix: do not leak fds in various open_proc* functions
- PR#5434: implement Unix.times in win32unix (partially)
- PR#5438: new warnings for unused declarations
- PR#5439: upgrade config.guess and config.sub
- PR#5445 and others: better printing of types with user-provided names
- PR#5454: Digest.compare is missing and md5 doc update
- PR#5455: .emacs instructions, add lines to recognize ocaml scripts
- PR#5456: pa_macro: replace __LOCATION__ after macro expansion; add
LOCATION_OF
- PR#5461: bytecode: emit warning when linking two modules with the same name
- PR#5478: ocamlopt assumes ar command exists
- PR#5479: Num.num_of_string may raise an exception, not reflected in the
documentation.
- PR#5501: increase IO_BUFFER_SIZE to 64KiB
- PR#5532: improve error message when bytecode file is wrong
- PR#5555: add function Hashtbl.reset to resize the bucket table to
its initial size.
- PR#5586: increase UNIX_BUFFER_SIZE to 64KiB
- PR#5597: register names for instrtrace primitives in embedded bytecode
- PR#5599: Add warn() tag in ocamlbuild to control -w compiler switch
- PR#5628: add #remove_directory and Topdirs.remove_directory to remove
a directory from the load path
- PR#5636: in system threads library, issue with linking of pthread_atfork
- PR#5666: C includes don't provide a revision number
- ocamldebug: ability to inspect values that contain code pointers
- ocamldebug: new 'environment' directive to set environment variables
for debuggee
- configure: add -no-camlp4 option
Shedding weight:
* Removed the obsolete native-code generators for Alpha, HPPA, IA64 and MIPS.
* The "DBM" library (interface with Unix DBM key-value stores) is no
longer part of this distribution. It now lives its own life at
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/camldbm/
* The "OCamlWin" toplevel user interface for MS Windows is no longer
part of this distribution. It now lives its own life at
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/ocamltopwin/
Other changes:
- Copy VERSION file to library directory when installing.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-07/msg00148.html
Gerd Stolpmann announced:
I've just released Ocamlnet-3.6. Bigger changes (but not really big):
- New abstraction for anonymous semaphores, improving the
compatibility with OS X
- PCRE is no longer needed, but it is still possible to build Ocamlnet
with PCRE as regular expression engine
For the smaller changes, see the ChangeLog.
Get Ocamlnet, read the manual etc. from
http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/ocamlnet.html
GODI: Because of the PCRE change, I currently don't want to update
GODI for Ocaml-3.12. In the upcoming version for Ocaml-4.00, I've
released Ocamlnet-3.6. There is now a new package godi-ocamlnet-pcre
for those users who need the Netstring_pcre module. Apparently, a
number of packages are broken because of this (at least a lot of my
own), but it's still a few days until 4.00 is out.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-07/msg00153.html
Jonathan Protzenko announced:
Following Damien's announcement, the installer for windows has been
updated, and is now available at
http://protz.github.com/ocaml-installer/.
Changelog:
- update flexdll to 0.30
- update findlib to 1.3.3
- install to c:\ocaml by default, since most packages, including
oasis' own setup.ml, cannot deal with spaces in paths (issue #14)
- instruct cygwin to use %TEMP%\cygwin as the temporary directory
(issue #16)
If you see any issues with it, speak up now!
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-07/msg00163.html
Alain Frisch announced:
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML
Thursday, September 13, 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark
(co-located with ICFP)
http://www.lexifi.com/ml2012
=======================================================================
The ML workshop is the annual event where users, developers and
researchers of ML languages (SML, OCaml, F#) can interact and discuss
ongoing research, open problems and innovative applications.
ML2012 will be held in Copenhagen on September 13, just after the ICFP
conference, and close to other exciting events, like OUD (OCaml Users
and Developers), CUFP (Commercial users of Functional Programming),
and more.
Program:
http://www.lexifi.com/ml2012
Registration (early registration deadline: August 9!):
http://icfpconference.org/icfp2012/registration.html
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-07/msg00164.html
Jérémie Dimino announced:
The Lwt team is happy to announce the release of Lwt 2.4.0. This
version fixes compatibility problems with OCaml 4.00 and contains a
few other enhancements and bug fixes.
You can download it at:
http://ocsigen.org/lwt/install
A description of changes is available at:
http://ocsigen.org/lwt/Lwt240
Here is a list of changes from the previous version (2.3.2):
* Reimplement Lwt_stream
** much simpler and more efficient
** do not use Weak
** add bounded push streams
* Add Lwt.async
* Add Lwt_preemptive.run_in_main
* Implement Lwt_unix.get_credentials on MacOS X/OpenBSD
* Ensure that on_cancel functions are executed first
* Better implementation of Lwt.cancel with more tests
* Simplify the API for unix jobs
* Better handling of the master lock in libev stubs
* Windows fixes/updates:
** pass -lws2_32 instead of ws2_32.lib if building with mingw
** fix a bug causing Lwt_unix.read/write to block when a socket
is not readable/writable
** port Lwt_process and Lwt_unix.system to windows
* Compatibility with ocaml 4.00:
** add O_SHARE_DELETE to Lwt_unix.open_flag
** add -package compiler-libs.toplevel for files using Toploop
* Do not use module Sys for signal handling to avoid
ocaml code to be called in a C thread
* Fix Lwt_unix.wrap_syscall: try instead of Lwt.catch
* Fix a dead-lock between lwt_unix_send_notification
and lwt_unix_recv_notifications
* Fix #277: add a function to return the Ssl.socket of a Lwt_ssl.socket
* Fix problems with C libraries detection/linking
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/.
ML workshop 2012: call for participation:
http://www.lexifi.com/blog/ml-workshop-2012-call-participation
CygwinGodi:
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/cygwingodi/
Programming tools UX: Better Type Error Messages:
http://blog.opalang.org/2012/07/programming-tools-ux-better-type-error.html
Theorems for Free: The Monad Edition:
http://alaska-kamtchatka.blogspot.com/2012/07/theorems-for-free-monad-edition.html
An Odd Lemma:
http://alaska-kamtchatka.blogspot.com/2012/07/odd-lemma.html
HTML rendering : client or server ?:
http://www.nicollet.net/2012/07/html-rendering-client-or-server/
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