From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Vincent Hanquez Subject: Re: ocaml?? why?? Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:51:32 +0100 Message-ID: <49DA08E4.4000303@eu.citrix.com> References: <20090406103321.GA26380@movementarian.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20090406103321.GA26380@movementarian.org> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com To: John Levon Cc: Dan Magenheimer , xen-devel , "George S. Coker, II" , Patrick Colp , Alex Zeffertt , Samuel Thibault List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org John Levon wrote: > On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 12:39:04PM -0700, Dan Magenheimer wrote: > > >> Why ocaml? Let me make it clear that I know very little >> about ocaml... it may be a perfect match for the job and >> the best language since sliced bread, but as far as I can >> tell it is NOT A WIDELY DEPLOYED language. As a result, >> the Xen community is going to have to work through all >> of the little distro/version-dependent idiosyncracies and >> > > I agree that might well be a concern, but it's not the major one IMHO. > Simply put, the barrier to entry for hacking Xen tools written in ocaml > is much, much higher. Whilst you might be willing to learn a new > language, most people won't be. Never mind re-learn everything they know > about debugging it[1]. > > Put another way: xenstored is hardly stretching C's capabilities. xend > is hardly stretching Python's (at least now Twisted isn't used). Where > is the /need/ for a new, little-understood, language to be used? > I understand what you means (audience wise it's true), however i think that's very misleading to say it's a "new/little-understood" language. it's has been around for a while (1996, or 1985 for caml light), even more considering that the language is a variant of ML (1973). python is 1991 FTR. > I also find it a little difficult to believe that xenstored-C's > purported defects couldn't have been fixed, and required a total > rewrite. > I'm sure the Xen team would be happy to apply your patch on the C version then :-) OCaml has been great to use. Programming the same functional tree store with advanced transaction merging capability in the C version would have been a major pain, compared to how (almost) easy it was in OCaml. -- Vincent