Description
I received an issue a while back (diskuv/dkml-installer-ocaml#11) to support base in utop for the Diskuv OCaml distribution (Windows, MSVC). I've also seen the same thread pop up in discuss.ocaml.org ... I presume people are reading Real World OCaml, but it didn't work so well on Windows.
Things have changed with the v0.15.x releases.
To simplify reading Real World OCaml I am automatically installing base in the Diskuv OCaml installer so that it is accessible from utop. I will also be installing a shim for utop so that the stublibs for base are accessible. That means, immediately after installation, a Windows user will be able to open utop in the Command Prompt or Power Shell, then do a #require "base";;, and they'll be able to follow along with the base portions of Real World OCaml.
That won't help them with core; that is too costly to install for every user, and more importantly I don't think it wise for a Windows user today to get too used to Jane Street libraries beyond base. async, among other things, does not have a Windows implementation. But they can always create a switch (dkml init ; opam install utop core) if they need core.
Key questions:
- Will there be a next release of the book?
- (Doubtful, but I'll ask anyway) Do you see future support for Windows in more of the Jane Street libraries.
asyncis one example of a critical Jane Street library that isn't supported on Windows. But perhaps there will be an OCaml 5 eio backend forasyncthat will work on Windows. - I assume there is some CI that is running RWO. Does it have Windows? That will make it clear which parts of the book work on Windows, and which don't. I do maintain https://github.com/diskuv/dkml-workflows#dkml-workflows which can be used to test Windows + MSVC for the more native Windows users.
Thanks!