Hello
Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of October 13 to 27, 2015.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00095.html
moosotc announced:
New version of llpp (tagged v22) is now available at
http://repo.or.cz/w/llpp.git
or
https://github.com/moosotc/llpp
Blurb:
llpp a graphical PDF viewer which aims to superficially resemble
less(1)
Changes:
* Bugfixes
* Build system changes (reintroduction of shell script for hassle free
building and addition of Shake[1] based one for nicer development
experience)
* Uses local copy of LablGL (mainly to avoid camlp[45] dependency)
[1] http://shakebuild.com/
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00107.html
Spiros Eliopoulos announced:
I'm happy to announce the initial release of ocaml-dispatch:
https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml-dispatch
ocaml-dispatch provides a basic mechanism for dispatching a request to a
handler based on hierarchical path names conventionally found in URIs. It can
be used both for dispatching requests in a server, as well as handing changes
to hierarchical fragments in a client-side application via js_of_ocaml.
The code for this package originated from the webmachine[0] project. The
dispatch package is now a dependency of webmachine as of the 0.2.0 release.
You can find dispatch.0.1.0 in OPAM currently, and webmachine.0.2.0 there
shortly.
There are some small projects in the issue tracker if anybody would like to
contribute. Issues and pull requests welcomed.
-Spiros E.
[0]: https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml-webmachine
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00110.html
David Chemouil asked:
I am looking for a self-contained, to the point, documentation or tutorial
detailing steps, or even commands and scripts to run in order to release and
publish an OCaml-programmed piece of software.
I guess it partly depends on one's way to develop and organize his or her code
base. Still I also guess there are common steps followed by a fair amount of
people.
As far as we are concerned for our project, we rely on OCaml code solely, plus
Opam-installed tools (e.g. Menhir) and libraries; plus Oasis and Ocamlbuild.
Our development is hosted on a Git repo.
So common tasks we'd like to automate are quite simple: adding the commit
number and/or a build number in the OCaml source code (e.g. to display it when
running the program), to display a git tag corresponding perhaps to
a human-readable version number, publishing the progam on Opam, maybe even
publishing a compiled version as a Debian package... As far as possible we'd
like to avoid reinventing the wheel as well as duplicating information already
present in a file (e.g. the _oasis file contains some data).
After some web searching, I was able to find real projects as examples as well
as some partial (good) tutorials but it would be nice if there was a single
documentation or bunch of scripts to address these rather common requirements.
Basile Starynkevitch replied:
This is not specific to Ocaml. It is a matter of build process.
Assuming a Linux system, you might have some rule in your Makefile similar to
the (untested) one below:
ML_SOURCES=$(wildcard [a-z]*.ml)
ML_INTERFACES=$(wildcard [a-z]*.mli)
MD5SUM= md5sum
_timestamp.ml:
date +'let my_timestamp="%c";;' > _timestamp.tmp
(echo -n 'let my_lastgitcommit ="' ; \
git log --format=oneline --abbrev=12 --abbrev-commit -q \
| head -1 | tr -d '\n\r\f\"' ; \
echo '";;') >> _timestamp.tmp
(echo -n 'let my_checksum ="'; cat $(sort $(ML_SOURCES)) $(sort
$(ML_INTERFACES))| $(MD5SUM) | cut -d' ' -f1 | tr -d '\n\r\f\"\\' ; echo '";')
>> _timestamp.tmp
mv _timestamp.tmp _timestamp.ml
Gabriel Scherer also replied:
For reference, an ocamlbuild version would look like this:
open Ocamlbuild_plugin
let () = dispatch (function
| After_rules ->
rule "version file"
~prod:"version.ml"
~doc:"generate a file with version information:
Version.commit is the HEAD commit at the time of building,
Version.tag is the name of the last git tag"
(fun _env _build ->
let trim = "tr -d '\r\n'" in
let commit = run_and_read ("git rev-parse HEAD |" ^ trim) in
let tag = run_and_read ("git describe --abbrev=0 --tags |" ^ trim) in
let code = Printf.sprintf
"let commit = %S\n\
let tag = %S\n"
commit tag in
Echo ([code], "version.ml");
)
| _ -> ()
);;
Ashish Agarwal also replied:
I have this in my OMake files:
if $(test -e .git)
GIT_COMMIT = 'Some "$(shell git rev-parse HEAD)"'
export
else
GIT_COMMIT = 'None'
export
I also define VERSION manually, but ideally I should extract the version from
my opam file.
Given those, I use m4 as follows to generate an About module for most of my
projects.
m4 -D VERSION=$(VERSION) -D GIT_COMMIT=$(GIT_COMMIT) about.ml.m4 > about.ml
$ cat about.ml.m4
(** General information about this project. *)
(** Version: [VERSION] *)
let version = "VERSION"
(** Git commit if known: [GIT_COMMIT] *)
let git_commit = GIT_COMMIT
ygrek also replied:
this seems to be a common theme this days, so I am using an ocamlbuild plugin
to handle git version extraction - https://github.com/ygrek/mybuild
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00114.html
Dan Stark asked:
NumPy and Pandas are quite famous in scientific computing with Python.
I am just wondering whether OCaml has such a library?
Does Jane Street provide any?
Tao Stein replied:
I use OCaml GSL ... https://opam.ocaml.org/packages/gsl/gsl.1.18.5/
And am happy with it, for access to the BLAS etc
Markus Mottl also replied:
Besides the GSL bindings there is also Lacaml, which interfaces a
considerable part of BLAS/LAPACK and provides many additional vector
and matrix functions: https://github.com/mmottl/lacaml
Daniel Bünzli also replied:
There also this library
https://github.com/hammerlab/oml
(never used it myself)
Francois Berenger also replied:
And also this one for statistics:
https://github.com/superbobry/pareto
Nils Becker also replied:
there is also this:
http://akabe.github.io/slap/
which implements matrices whose dimensions are encoded in the type.
fwiw, for special functions one can interface to c libraries relatively
easily using ctypes. e.g. Rmath has a lot.
hdf5 support has just arrived,
https://opam.ocaml.org/packages/hdf5/hdf5.0.1/
i too would absolutely love to have something like numpy and something
like pandas in ocaml. the features i would want from ocaml-numpy are a
nice compact array slicing syntax, something like broadcasting, indexing
of arrays with int arrays or lists, and some magic that knows how to
choose the appropriate BLAS routines for common matrix operations. for a
pandas equivalent, flexible indexing would be the most important thing.
and printing a nice readable short output on screen with minimal effort.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00130.html
Spiros Eliopoulos asked:
I'm trying to create a "container" class[0] that can store a value of type 'a,
and transform that value to another value of type 'b. I'm trying to do this by
including a "map" method in the container that applies a function to the value
and returns a new instance of container with the transformed value. Despite
the annotations, the types aren't working out as I expected:
class ['a] container (v:'a) = object
method map (f:'a -> 'b) : 'b container = new container (f v)
end;;
(* class ['a] container : 'a -> object method map : ('a -> 'a) -> 'a container
end *)
I gather I'm either doing something wrong, or it's not possible. I suppose my
question, which one is it? and if I'm doing something wrong, some guidance
would be appreciated. Thanks!
-Spiros E.
[0]: Note that this is a minimal, contrived example of my actual problem. The
actual problem came up while writing js_of_ocaml bindings.
Jeremy Yallop replied:
It's not exactly possible, but there are workarounds.
The reason the types don't work out as you expect is that structural
types (objects, classes, polymorphic variants) in OCaml are required
to be "regular". A parameterised type t is regular if every
occurrence of t within its own definition is instantiated with the
parameters. For example, the following type (t1) is regular:
# type ('a, 'b) t1 = [`A of ('a, 'b) t1];;
type ('a, 'b) t1 = [`A of ('a, 'b) t1]
but this one (t2) isn't, because the order of parameters is reversed
# type ('a, 'b) t2 = [`A of ('b, 'a) t2];;
Characters 5-38:
type ('a, 'b) t2 = [`A of ('b, 'a) t2];;
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error: In the definition of t2, type ('b, 'a) t2 should be ('a, 'b) t2
type ('a, 'b) t2 = [`A of ('b, 'a) t2]
and this one (t3) isn't, either, because the parameters are
instantiated with concrete types
# type ('a, 'b) t3 = [`A of (int, string) t3];;
Characters 5-43:
type ('a, 'b) t3 = [`A of (int, string) t3];;
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Error: In the definition of t3, type (int, string) t3 should be ('a, 'b) t3
As the output shows, OCaml rejects the non-regular definitions for t2
and t3. Your example code also attempts to define a non-regular type,
but since the type variable 'b is available for unification, OCaml
doesn't need to reject the definition altogether. Instead, 'b is
unified with the class parameter 'a to produce a regular type which is
acceptable to OCaml (but which doesn't do what you want).
How might we side-step the regularity constraint? One approach is to
arrange things so that the recursion passes through a non-structural
type, such as a variant or record. In an imaginary extension to OCaml
with support for groups of mutually-recursive types and classes we
could write something like this:
class ['a] container (v:'a) = object
method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b container_aux =
fun f -> { container = new container (f v) }
end
and 'a container_aux = { container: 'a container }
In today's OCaml we can achieve a similar effect by routing all the
recursive references through a recursive module, albeit at a rather
heavy syntactic cost:
module rec R:
sig
class ['a] container : 'a ->
object
method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b R.container_aux
end
type 'a container_aux = { container: 'a container }
end =
struct
class ['a] container (v:'a) = object
method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b R.container_aux =
fun f -> { R.container = new R.container (f v) }
end
type 'a container_aux = { container: 'a container }
end
which at least achieves the desired effect:
# let c = new R.container 3;;
val c : int R.container = <obj>
# (c#map string_of_int).R.container;;
- : string R.container = <obj>
Spiros Eliopoulos then said and Mikhail Mandrykin replied:
> Thank, Jeremy, for the great explanation and possible work around.
> Unfortunately for me, the workaround won't be possible to use for the
> js_of_ocaml use case I have in mind. At least not without sprinkling
> Obj.magic everywhere, which is what I'm trying to avoid.
>
> Based on your workaround, I thought I might be able to create my own
> workaround with code that looked something like this:
>
> module rec R : sig
> class type ['a] container1 = object
> method map : ('a -> 'b) -> 'b R.container2
> end
> class type ['a] container2 = object
> method op : 'a R.container1
> end
> end = struct
> ...
> end
>
> But of course the type system complained that:
>
> Error: In the definition of R.container2, type
> 'b R.container1
> should be
> 'a R.container1
>
> I thought this might be for a different than the one you mentioned, but
> upon further reflection and a single unrolling of the types, it seems to be
> the regular type constraint that's causing this error as well.
It seems this is essentially not the workaround that was pointed out, as the
suggestion was:
>> One approach is to
>> arrange things so that the recursion passes through a *non-structural
>> type*, such as a variant or record.
And an object type 'a container2 is a structural type. As far as I understand,
the semantics for type-checking of structural type abbreviations is the same
as if all those abbreviations were expanded. So introducing a new class ['a]
container2 doesn't help, because its corresponding object type ends up being
expanded while type-checking ['a] container1 anyway and leads to essentially
the same error. The regularity restriction seems to also arise from the same
expansion semantics where we would need to infinitely expand the structural
type abbreviation while checking itself and therefore would be unable to write
recursive structural types altogether, but the issue is addressed by replacing
the whole abbreviated type application with a type variable e.g. 'a container1
= 'self and using this 'self in place of all regular self-references. Thus the
type can remain structural (it's still possible to write it down without
naming it) despite the self-references e.g. ( < get : 'a; map : 'self > as
'self). For irregular self-references this doesn't work (if 'a container =
'self then what's 'b container or how to designate it to avoid infinite
expansion?).
Just in case an another possible work-around would be to use an abstract type
instead of a concrete nominal type as a proxy. This can be a little bit more
suitable as an abstract type can be later bound to the same structural type
and wrapping/unwrapping would become identity in the implementation. This is
more heavyweight, though, e.g:
module type S = sig
type 'a c'
val new_c : 'a -> 'a c'
end
module rec F' :
functor (M : S) -> sig
class ['a] c : 'a -> object
method get : 'a
method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b M.c'
end
end =
functor (M : S) -> struct
class ['a] c (a : 'a) = object
method get = a
method map : 'b. (_ -> 'b) -> 'b M.c' = fun f -> M.new_c (f a)
end
end
module rec F : sig
type 'a c'
class ['a] c : 'a -> object
method get : 'a
method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b F.c'
end
val new_c : 'a -> 'a F.c'
val self_cast : 'a c' -> 'a c
end = struct
module F' = F'(F)
class ['a] c = ['a] F'.c
type 'a c' = 'a c
let new_c a = new F.c a
let self_cast (x : 'a c') = (x : 'a c)
end
let () =
let c1 = new F.c 1 in
Printf.eprintf "%d\n" c1#get;
let c2 = F.self_cast @@ c1#map (string_of_int) in
Printf.eprintf "%s\n" c2#get
Here F.self_cast is actually an identity function an is only used to help
type-checking.
Oleg also replied:
The question was about creating a class of the following type
> class type ['a] container : 'a ->
> object
> method map : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b container
> end
with a mapping method that makes a container of a different
type. Jeremy Yallop has explained very well the class of exactly such
type is not possible. The following is perhaps the simplest workaround
requiring neither modules nor other higher-class artillery. It should
have been possible even in OCaml 3.10 or earlier.
The idea was inspired by some high-falutin' Math, namely, left Kan
extension from Category Theory. I actually don't know CT but I think I
got the gist of the left Kan extension: rather than execute an an
operation, just collect all the needed arguments and declare the
operation performed. The recent paper on Freer monads (Haskell
Symposium 2015) used two instances of this new kind of laziness.
Here is the whole solution
type 'a cont_proxy = P of 'a
class ['a] container (x : 'a) = object
method get_x = x
method map' : 'b. ('a -> 'b) -> 'b cont_proxy = fun f ->
P (f x)
end
The class container has one argument, which is the value needed to
construct the container. The data type cont_proxy contains all the
information needed to construct the container, but not the container
itself (for one, the container type is not yet defined when we
declared P). The method map' doesn't actually construct anything; it
merely returns the data needed for the construction.
The map itself is then easy to define:
let map : ('a -> 'b) -> ('a container -> 'b container) = fun f c ->
match c#map' f with
P x -> new container x
let c = new container 3
val c : int container = <obj>
let _ = c#get_x
- : int = 3
let c' = map string_of_int c
val c' : string container = <obj>
let _ = c'#get_x
- : string = "3"
Jacques Garrigue finally said:
The externalizing solution has been known since the beginning of
OCaml, but it is nice to know that it has such a cute name…
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00134.html
Spiros Eliopoulos announced:
I'm happy to announce the latest release of dispatch. What's notable about
this release is that it includes out-of-the-box js_of_ocaml support.
Specifically, it allows you to easily set up front-end applications to use the
URI fragment to track state transitions and history. For example:
let fragment_thread =
Dispatch_js.dispatch_on_fragment ~default:"/" [
("/" , root_handler)
; ("/user/:id/", user_handler)
]
... creates a thread that will monitor for URI fragment changes and dispatch
to the appropriate handler. In addition, it will set the initial fragment to
"/" and ensure that the handler for that path is initially called; even if the
fragment was already set to "/" when the thread started, dispatch will still
occur.
Due to the API changes included in this release, webmachine[0]'s version has
been bumped to 0.2.1. You can find both the new version of dispatch and
webmachine on OPAM.
Full but short release notes can be found here:
https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml-dispatch/releases/tag/0.2.0
As always, issues and pull requests welcomed.
-Spiros E.
[0]: https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml-webmachine
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00145.html
Shuai Wang announced:
I’m glad to announce the first release of Uroboros: an infrastructure for
reassembleable disassembling and transformation.
You can find the code here: https://github.com/s3team/uroboros
You can find our research paper which describes the core technique implemented
in Uroboros here:
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity15/sec15-paper-wang-shuai.pdf
We will provide a project home page, as well as more detailed documents in the
near future. Issues and pull requests welcomed.
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00167.html
Gerd Stolpmann announced:
a new minor version has been released with a few fixes, including
mingw64 support.
As always, links for download can be found here:
http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/findlib.html
Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-10/msg00191.html
Xavier Leroy announced:
As announced at the OCaml workshop last September, the development
sources for the core OCaml system are now hosted at Github,
ocaml/ocaml project. (Before, this Github repository was a read-only
mirror of a master SVN repository hosted at Inria.)
Those of you who track the OCaml development version via SVN at
http://caml.inria.fr/svn/ocaml/ should switch to Git at
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.git instead. The SVN repo remains
available for a few more weeks, but is no longer updated.
All other users should be unaffected by this change.
Thanks to Alp Mestan, we now include in the OCaml Weekly News the links to the
recent posts from the ocamlcore planet blog at http://planet.ocaml.org/.
Jane Street: Quickcheck for Core
https://blogs.janestreet.com/quickcheck-for-core/
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