Attn: Development Editor, Latest OCaml Weekly News

Hello

Here is the latest OCaml Weekly News, for the week of January 09 to 16,
2024.

Table of Contents
─────────────────

Verifying an Effect-Based Cooperative Concurrency Scheduler in Iris, by Adrian Dapprich
OCaml Software Foundation: January 2024 update
Miou, a simple scheduler for OCaml 5
Grace 💅, fancy diagnostic library for compilers
Js_of_ocaml 5.5.2
First release of oma
Ocamlearlybird just got ability to inspect opaque/abstract values
Validate - A New Library for Data Validation
dune.3.12.1
Other OCaml News
Old CWN


Verifying an Effect-Based Cooperative Concurrency Scheduler in Iris, by Adrian Dapprich
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/video-verifying-an-effect-based-cooperative-concurrency-scheduler-in-iris-by-adrian-dapprich/13825/1>


Vincent Balat announced
───────────────────────

  Adrian Dapprich gave a talk at Tarides a few weeks ago, about
  Verifying an Effect-Based Cooperative Concurrency Scheduler in Iris.
  Here is a link to the video.

  Abstract:

        Lightweight asynchronous programming (using futures,
        goroutines or green threads) has been widely adopted to
        organize programs with many concurrent tasks, more than
        are traditionally feasible with thread-per-task models of
        concurrency. With the release of OCaml 5 and its support
        for effect handlers, the new concurrency library Eio was
        proposed which aims to replace previous monadic
        concurrency libraries for OCaml. In this work we verify
        the core fiber and promise abstractions of Eio and show
        their safety and effect safety using the Hazel program
        logic. Hazel is built on the Iris framework and allows
        reasoning about programs with effect handlers. We also
        adapt the existing proof of the verified CQS datastructure
        since Eio uses a customized version of CQS for its
        implementation of promises. We do not treat some features
        of Eio like cancellation, because it does not yield a
        verifiable specification, and resource control using
        switches, since it is a liveness property.

  <https://watch.ocaml.org/w/iQNqZzA8gVmd4RQaycAwx4>


OCaml Software Foundation: January 2024 update
══════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-software-foundation-january-2024-update/13828/1>


gasche announced
────────────────

  Happy new year!

  This is an update update on recent works of the [OCaml Software
  Foundation], covering our 2023 actions – the previous update was in
  [January 2023].

  The OCaml Software Foundation is a non-profit foundation ([earlier
  thread]) that receives funding from [our industrial sponsors] each
  year, and tries its best to spend it to support and strengthen the
  OCaml ecosystem and community.

  The funding volume we receive each year is around 200K€. (For
  comparison: this is the yearly cost of one experienced full-time
  software engineer in many parts of the world.) We do not fund people
  full-time for long periods. Most actions receive from 3K€ to 20K€. The
  work to prepare and execute actions is mostly done by the (unpaid)
  [Executive Committee]. It is currently formed by Nicolás Ojeda Bär,
  Damien Doligez, Xavier Leroy, Kim Nguyễn, Virgile Prevosto and myself,
  with administrative personnel provided by [INRIA] and general
  assistance by Alan Schmitt.

  Our current sponsors (thanks!) are [ahrefs], [Jane Street], [Tezos],
  [Bloomberg], [Lexifi], [SimCorp], [MERCE] and [Tarides]. (If your
  company would like to join as a sponsor, please [get in touch].
  Unfortunately, we still cannot efficiently process small donations, so
  we are not calling for individual donations.)

  Feel free to use this thread for questions/suggestions :-)

  *Recent actions*


[OCaml Software Foundation] <http://ocaml-sf.org/>

[January 2023]
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-software-foundation-january-2023-update/11217>

[earlier thread]
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-the-ocaml-software-foundation/4476>

[our industrial sponsors] <http://ocaml-sf.org/#sponsors>

[Executive Committee] <http://ocaml-sf.org/about-us/>

[INRIA]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Institute_for_Research_in_Computer_Science_and_Automation>

[ahrefs] <https://ahrefs.com/>

[Jane Street] <https://janestreet.com/>

[Tezos] <https://tezos.com/>

[Bloomberg] <https://bloomberg.com/>

[Lexifi] <https://lexifi.com/>

[SimCorp] <https://simcorp.com/>

[MERCE] <https://www.mitsubishielectric-rce.eu/>

[Tarides] <https://tarides.com/>

[get in touch] <http://ocaml-sf.org/becoming-a-sponsor/>

Teaching
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

  We are funding an update and English translation (still in progress)
  of the French book [Apprendre à Programmer avec OCaml], by Sylvain
  Conchon and Jean-Christophe Filliâtre, under the understanding that it
  will be released as open access content – online, at no cost. This is
  a good book that is suitable for use in classroom of first- or
  second-year university students of various level. (In comparison,
  [OCaml from the Very Beginning] and [Real World OCaml] are more aimed
  as self-study than use in classroom, and the [Cornell CS3110 textbook]
  is aimed at more advanced students with a strong background.)

  For the second year in a row, we funded a Spanish [summer school] on
  functional programming in OCaml, organized in Saragossa by Ricardo
  Rodriguez and Roberto Blanco. This is an occasion for students to
  discover OCaml and functional programming, and the organizers also run
  a one-day mini-workshop for the students and anyone interested
  (including online), the [Day of the Caml].


[Apprendre à Programmer avec OCaml]
<http://programmer-avec-ocaml.lri.fr/>

[OCaml from the Very Beginning]
<https://johnwhitington.net/ocamlfromtheverybeginning/index.html>

[Real World OCaml] <https://dev.realworldocaml.org/>

[Cornell CS3110 textbook] <https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html>

[summer school] <https://webdiis.unizar.es/evpf/index.html>

[Day of the Caml] <https://webdiis.unizar.es/evpf/event.html>


Outreach
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

  We are funding the recurring [OCaml Meetup in Paris]; this year we are
  also funding a new meetup in Toulouse, a city in the south-west region
  of France known for duck cuisine, white beans, and strong aerospace
  industry. If you are interested in organizing an OCaml meetup in your
  city, and some light funding would help, please get in touch!

  We got in touch with the organizers of the ICFP 2023 conference to
  ensure that colocated workshops (which include the OCaml Workshop) can
  be attended online at low or no cost. The ICFP organizers accepted to
  (semi-officially) make virtual attendance free, so we tried to
  [encourage broad participation] to the OCaml Workshop. We also
  supported the OCaml Workshop by funding the expenses of some of the
  program committee members to attend, when they do not have an employer
  in academia or industry that can easily reimburse their trip.

  We are supporting the work of Alan Schmitt on the [Caml Weekly
  Newsletter (CWN)].

  Kim Nguyễn ran the [OCaml User Survey 2023] for the OCaml Foundation –
  we have not posted the survey results yet.

  We invited Sudha Parimala to propose more actions oriented towards
  diversity and inclusion. A first step is the inclusion of demographic
  questions in the 2023 survey, to get a better picture of the current
  composition of the OCaml community.


[OCaml Meetup in Paris] <https://discuss.ocaml.org/tag/oups>

[encourage broad participation]
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-workshop-2023-saturday-september-9th-seattle-timezone-online-attendance-is-free/12226>

[Caml Weekly Newsletter (CWN)] <https://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/>

[OCaml User Survey 2023]
<https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-ocaml-user-survey-2023/13469>


Ecosystem
╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌

◊ Infrastructure

  As in previous years, we are funding Kate Deplaix to work on “release
  readiness” of the OCaml ecosystem: when a new OCaml release is being
  prepared, Kate checks the compatibility of all opam packages with the
  upcoming release and gets in touch with maintainers to contribute or
  request support for the new version. The OCaml 5 transition has been a
  lot of work for Kate on this front – mostly not due to the Multicore
  runtime changes, but the removal of various long-deprecated functions
  of our C and OCaml APIs.

  For almost as long as we can remember, Kate Deplaix has also been the
  most active maintainer of the opam-repository – the person who
  provides feedback when there is a packaging issue in a new PR to the
  opam-repository, to interpret CI failures, recommend best packaging
  practices, etc. (Kate’s work on this topic was funded by OCamllabs
  then Tarides, not the OCaml Foundation.) Kate decided recently to move
  on to other things – notably, contributions to `opam'. (There was a
  [call for volunteers] on Discuss around that time.) This was a bit of
  a scare for us as the good health of the public opam-repository is
  central to the functioning of the current OCaml free software
  ecosystem. We were already providing financial support (in the form of
  research funding) to Marcello Seri, the second most-active
  contributor, and renewed our support. We also got in touch with other
  opam-repository contributors, and started funding the work of Haochen
  Xie.


  [call for volunteers]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/call-for-new-opam-repository-maintainers/12041/8>


◊ Tools

  We got in touch with frequent Dune contributors to offer financial
  support for their contributions. [Ali Caglayan] was supported in this
  way in 2023.

  We are supporting some of the work of Jonah Beckford on Windows
  support of OCaml, as well as his work on mentoring OCaml students in
  the Seattle area. If you want to learn about Jonah’s work, consider
  watching [his April 2023 talk] at the Houston Functional Programmers
  meetup.

  Simmo Saan spontaneously [took up maintenance of ocamlearlybird], the
  bytecode debugger frontend that integrates with visual studio code –
  we had previously funded ocamlearlybird maintenance, but its Wen moved
  to a demanding startup and was not available to work on ocamlearlybird
  anymore. We are funding the time of Simmo Saan, who accomplished a lot
  in a short amount of time, notably the integration of the
  ocamlearlybird plugin in the main OCaml plugin for vscode.

  We will be funding one year of post-doc by [Takafumi Saikawa] at
  Nagoya University, to continue his work with Jacques Garrigue on the
  refactoring of the OCaml type-checker. The type-checker codebase
  suffers from technical debt, and the effort led by Jacques in the last
  few year has been precious in making it easier to understand, improve
  and extend for other developers.


  [Ali Caglayan] <https://github.com/Alizter>

  [his April 2023 talk]
  <https://hfpug.org/2023/04/21/jonah-beckford-what-distributing-ocaml-on-windows-gave-me-and-you/>

  [took up maintenance of ocamlearlybird]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-earlybird-1-2-0-revival-of-a-debugger/12741>

  [Takafumi Saikawa] <https://github.com/t6s>


◊ Libraries

  We funded work by Alan Hu to improve the OCaml LLVM bindings, to
  support newer LLVM releases and make them compatible with OCaml 5.
  Alan [announced this work] on Discuss.

  We support the contributions of Daniel Bünzli to the OCaml ecosystem.
  Daniel used this support to fund the development of

  • [cmarkit], a new Markdown parser and renderer for OCaml, and
    [ocamlmark] a tool to use Markdown to write OCaml documentation
    comments,
  • [WebGPU support in brr], his browser interaction toolkit
  • support for Unicode 15.0 and 15.1 in his Unicode libraries
  • [zipc], a pure-OCaml ZIP archiver.

  We continued providing partial support for the work of Antonio
  Monteiro on [Melange]. In 2023, Antonio [announced Melange 1.0].

  We are supporting the work of Petter Urkedal on the [Caqti] library,
  the main database connection library in the OCaml community. [Caqti 2]
  was released in 2023.

  We will be supporting the time of Nathan Rebours to [contribute to the
  maintenance] of [ppxlib].


  [announced this work]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-llvm-15-is-out/13019>

  [cmarkit]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-cmarkit-0-1-0-commonmark-parser-and-renderer-for-ocaml/11900>

  [ocamlmark]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/poc-ocamlmark-an-ocamldoc-to-commonmark-bi-directional-translation/11901/2>

  [WebGPU support in brr]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/poc-ocamlmark-an-ocamldoc-to-commonmark-bi-directional-translation/11901/2>

  [zipc] <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-zipc-0-1-0/13388>

  [Melange] <https://melange.re/v2.2.0/>

  [announced Melange 1.0]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-melange-1-0-compile-ocaml-reasonml-to-javascript/12305>

  [Caqti] <https://github.com/paurkedal/ocaml-caqti/>

  [Caqti 2] <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-caqti-2-0-1/12885>

  [contribute to the maintenance]
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/welcoming-a-new-ppxlib-maintainer/13620>

  [ppxlib] <https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ppxlib>


Miou, a simple scheduler for OCaml 5
════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-miou-a-simple-scheduler-for-ocaml-5/12963/13>


Calascibetta Romain announced
─────────────────────────────

  I’m delighted to announce the [`beta2'] release of Miou. This
  summarises the feedback we’ve received and specifies the API that this
  library should offer in terms of scheduling.

  As a reminder, Miou is intended to be simple and designed for
  developing services and integrating into a unikernel. We were talking
  about implementing a library such as [happy-eyeballs] with Miou, but
  we have now made available a library that implements [an HTTP client
  and/or server] (`http/1.1', `h2' as well as `alpn' support via
  [ocaml-tls]).

  This has enabled us to find bugs typical of a transition between OCaml
  4 and OCaml 5, in particular illegal parallel access to data on
  [mirage-crypto] (although we would like to observe the implications in
  terms of performance of our fix).

  We will of course continue to listen and experiment with Miou in order
  to develop this library in a way that suits us and our users. The
  documentation has been updated accordingly and is now available
  [here].


[`beta2'] <https://github.com/robur-coop/miou/releases/tag/v0.0.1_beta2>

[happy-eyeballs] <https://github.com/robur-coop/happy-eyeballs>

[an HTTP client and/or server] <https://github.com/robur-coop/httpcats>

[ocaml-tls] <https://github.com/mirleft/ocaml-tls/>

[mirage-crypto] <https://github.com/mirage/mirage-crypto/pull/186>

[here] <https://docs.osau.re/>


Grace 💅, fancy diagnostic library for compilers
════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-grace-fancy-diagnostic-library-for-compilers/13834/1>


Alistair O’Brien announced
──────────────────────────

  It is my pleasure to announce the initial release of [Grace], a
  cutting-edge OCaml library 🐪 that includes a series of interfaces for
  building, reporting, and rendering beautiful compiler diagnostics.

  To get started, simply run:
  ┌────
  │ opam update
  │ opam install grace
  └────

  *Key features*
  • 📐 Inline and multi-line error messages with associated priorities
  • 📂 Multi-file errors
  • ⚙️ Configurable rendering (styling and character set)
  • 🌈 Coloured messages for ANSI terminals
  • 💪 100% OCaml

  The project is still in its early phase with many additional features
  planned:
  • 📚 Unicode support
  • ⚡️ LSP integration with `linol'
  • 👀 Accessibility features such improved colour options and
    narratable renderers

  I invite the community to play with Grace, exploring its capabilities
  and limitations. Your insights will play a crucial role in shaping the
  future of this library :)


[Grace] <https://github.com/johnyob/grace>


Js_of_ocaml 5.5.2
═════════════════

  Archive: <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-js-of-ocaml-5-5-2/13581/2>


Hhugo announced
───────────────

  Js_of_ocaml 5.6 was released recently with many fixes related to its
  javascript parser/printer/minifier


First release of oma
════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-first-release-of-oma/13845/1>


François Pottier announced
──────────────────────────

  Hello,

  It is my pleasure to announce the first release of Oma. This library
  offers an implementation of the order maintenance data structure
  described in [this paper].

  ┌────
  │   opam update
  │   opam install oma
  └────

  Here is its [documentation].

  Happy hacking!


[this paper]
<https://erikdemaine.org/papers/DietzSleator_ESA2002/paper.pdf>

[documentation]
<http://cambium.inria.fr/~fpottier/oma/doc/oma/Oma/index.html>


Ocamlearlybird just got ability to inspect opaque/abstract values
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-ocamlearlybird-just-got-ability-to-inspect-opaque-abstract-values/13852/1>


文宇祥 announced
────────────────

  I’m pleased to announce the release of ocamlearlybird.1.3.0. It should
  soon be able available in opam.

  A big feature just landed. You can inspect opaque/abstract values
  since version 1.3.0.

  see <https://github.com/hackwaly/ocamlearlybird/pull/53>


Validate - A New Library for Data Validation
════════════════════════════════════════════

  Archive:
  <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-validate-a-new-library-for-data-validation/13861/1>


Mateusz Ledwoń announced
────────────────────────

  Hello!

  I’m excited to announce the preview release of a new library called
  `validate'! This library aims to make the process of validating
  records, lists, or individual values more streamlined and efficient.

  `validate' operates through a PPX deriver that automatically generates
  validators using annotations. It comes with an array of helper
  validation functions for different data types, making it versatile and
  easy to integrate into your projects.

  *Example Usage*:

  Imagine you have a record type with various fields that need
  validation. With `validate', you can easily annotate these fields and
  the library will handle the rest. For example:

  ┌────
  │ type my_record = {
  │   min : string; [@min_length 2]
  │   email : string; [@email]
  │   uuid : string; [@uuid]
  │   url : string; [@url] [@max_length 200]
  │   numeric_list : int list; [@list_min_length 2] [@less_than 10]
  │   other_record: other; [@dive]
  │ } [@@deriving validate]
  └────

  This will automatically create a `validate_my_record' function,
  applying the specified validations to each field.

  *Installation*: You can install `validate' using OPAM:

  Copy code

  ┌────
  │ opam install validate
  └────
  I encourage you to try it out, and your feedback and contributions are
  invaluable at this stage.

  For more details, please visit GitHub [repository] and check out the
  [documentation].


[repository] <https://github.com/Axot017/validate >

[documentation] <https://axot017.github.io/validate/>


dune.3.12.1
═══════════

  Archive: <https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-dune-3-12-1/13536/2>


Etienne Millon announced
────────────────────────

  We just released version 3.12.2 with 2 bugfixes:

  • Fix version check in `runtest_alias' for `cram' stanza (#9454,
    @emillon)
  • Fix stack overflow when a `(run)' action can not be parsed. (#9530,
    fixes #9529, @gridbugs)


Other OCaml News
════════════════

From the ocaml.org blog
───────────────────────

  Here are links from many OCaml blogs aggregated at [the ocaml.org
  blog].

  • [Meet odoc, OCaml’s Documentation Generator]


[the ocaml.org blog] <https://ocaml.org/blog/>

[Meet odoc, OCaml’s Documentation Generator]
<https://tarides.com/blog/2024-01-10-meet-odoc-ocaml-s-documentation-generator>


Old CWN
═══════

  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
  to the [caml-list].

  [Alan Schmitt]


[send me a message] <mailto:[email protected]>

[the archive] <https://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/>

[RSS feed of the archives] <https://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/cwn.rss>

[caml-list] <https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/info/caml-list>

[Alan Schmitt] <https://alan.petitepomme.net/>