OCaml Weekly News

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Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of September 21 to 28, 2021.

Table of Contents

Brr 0.0.2, a toolkit for programming browsers

Daniel Bünzli announced

It's my pleasure to announce the release 0.0.2 of Brr, a toolkit for programming browsers in OCaml with the js_of_ocaml compiler.

Once it has made it to the repo, install with opam install brr and consult the API docs and manuals (or via odig doc brr).

This release fixes binding bugs, adds a few new bindings and tweaks some existing signatures. Thanks to all of those who provided bug reports, suggestions and code.

The release notes have all the details.

Become an Outreachy Mentor: support the growth and diversity of the OCaml community

Thibaut Mattio announced

I've submitted two projects for the winter session:

  • Integrate a package health check in ocaml.org

To essentially integrate a version of check.ocamllabs.io that can be used by opam-repository maintainers and opam users into the next version of ocaml.org (https://v3.ocaml.org).

  • Support .eml files in OCaml's VSCode extension

To add support for Dream's .eml files syntax in the extension, and eventually have error reporting for these files from OCaml LSP Server.

I'm more than interested in having co-mentors for these two projects, so if you wanted to mentor Outreachy interns but didn't have any project ideas, don't hesitate to reach out :slight_smile:

Another way to help that does not involve mentoring is to find good first issues that will help onboard and select candidates for the projects. Any help on this effort to identify, create and document good first issues for the different projects is more than welcome!

OCaml 4.13.0 (and 4.12.1)

octachron announced

The OCaml team ha the pleasure of celebrating the 175th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune by announcing the joint releases of OCaml version 4.13.0 and 4.12.1 .

Some of the highlights in the 4.13.0 release are:

  • Safe points: a multicore prerequisite that ensures that ocamlopt-generated code can always be interrupted.
  • The best-fit GC allocation policy is now the default policy (and many other GC improvements).
  • Named existential type variables in pattern matching: Showable (type a) (x, show : a * (a -> string)).
  • Improved error messages for functor application and functor types.
  • Let-punning for monadic let: let* x = x in can be shortened to let* x in.
  • Module type substitutions: SIG with module type T = F(X).S.
  • Many other quality of life improvements
  • Many bug fixes

The 4.12.1 release is a collection of safe bug fixes, cherry-picked from the 4.13.0 development cycle. If you were using OCaml 4.12.0 and cannot yet upgrade to 4.13.0, this release is for you.

The full list of changes can be found in the changelogs below. (Editor note: as it’s quite long, it is not included here. Please follow the link to the original article to read it.)

Those releases are available as OPAM switches, and as a source download here:

and there:

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