Re: ocaml 5

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost> writes:

> On Fri, Nov 29, 2024 at 08:39:06PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
>  > I am really not comfortable with moving to ocaml5.  It seems like many
>  > in the ocaml world (those who produce software in ocaml, rather than
>  > those who produce ocaml) think it's not really baked.  unison, at least,
>  > has a policy of not accepting bug reports that aren't reproduced under
>  > 4.14.x.
>  > 
>  > I wonder if we should be having two versions.  But that is its own
>  > negative.
>
> I am starting to get the impression that it's pretty much ready; e.g.
> homebrew went to 5 by default a few months ago.

It may be ready now.  I am just urging on the side of caution.

>  > Either way, it would be good to have the most recent production 5.x in
>  > wip, to enable testing.   Doesn't look like that now.
>
> Indeed...

It turns out it is closer than I thought.  wip has 5.2.0, and 5.2.1 came
out on November 18.

So, I guess the todo list is

  - update wip/ocaml to 5.2.1
  - for everything that uses ocaml, try it with 5.2.1 and update to a
    version that works with 5.2.1 and still works with 4.14.2
  - add bulk-test-ocaml
  - react to 5.3.0, probably in January or February
  - see what we learned from the above

I'm about to clean up the labltk stuff given the dune fix, and will also
sync changes from lang/ocaml to wip, and do the update to 5.2.1 if easy.

After this message, I plan to drop tech-pkg from detailed discussion.
People who care about particular programs in ocaml should probably test
with the wip/ocaml along the way.