Re: [PATCH 2/2] tools/ocaml: Default to useful build output

[Christian Lindig <christian.lindig@citrix.com>]

I think this would at least force a clean-up and open the project to wider set of OCaml developers. This might lead to a situation where the OCaml xenstore is not readily available for the consumers of Xen and I don't know who wants it how much. But I would prefer a situation where the OCaml xenstore can be built against a system with Xen libraries installed rather than only within the Xen tree. This would help to modernise the OCaml xenstore code base not just in terms of the build system but tackle long-standing problems like improving the code around select/poll which is inefficient. 

-- C

________________________________________
From: Paul Durrant <xadimgnik@gmail.com>
Sent: 20 July 2020 10:00
To: Christian Lindig; 'Elliott Mitchell'; xen-devel@lists.xen.org
Cc: Ian Jackson; Edwin Torok; wl@xen.org; dave@recoil.org
Subject: RE: [PATCH 2/2] tools/ocaml: Default to useful build output

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Xen-devel <xen-devel-bounces@lists.xenproject.org> On Behalf Of Christian Lindig
> Sent: 20 July 2020 09:39
> To: Elliott Mitchell <ehem+xen@m5p.com>; xen-devel@lists.xen.org
> Cc: Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@citrix.com>; Edwin Torok <edvin.torok@citrix.com>; wl@xen.org;
> dave@recoil.org
> Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] tools/ocaml: Default to useful build output
>
>
>
> > Time for a bit of controversy.
>
> OCaml outside Xen has moved to a different model of building based on dune which is fast, declarative
> and reliable. The OCaml xenstore is stagnating because nobody with OCaml experience wants to touch it
> anymore.

It is still the default. Would you suggest that we change this and make C xenstored the default for 4.15, deprecating oxenstored
with a view to subsequently purging it from the tree in the 4.16 dev cycle?

  Paul

> It would be beneficial for the health of the OCaml xenstore to split it out such that it
> could be worked on independently. You might argue that Make is still appropriate for building OCaml
> projects but the OCaml community has moved through several build systems, starting from Make, and
> learned the hard way that this is not an easy problem. After years of more-or-less successful build
> system the consensus is that dune is right one and it has resulted in combination with the Opam
> package manager the ecosystem to flourish. Alternatively, it would be possible to move OCaml xenstore
> to dune within the Xen tree but it would create a dependency on it.
>
> -- C