dev meeting 20190129

opam file generation

@avsm has been working on the automatic generation of opam files. The idea is that dune can generate most of what goes in opam files from its own metadata. For now, the opam files will be promoted to the source tree and committed. @avsm is planning to finish the first version of this feature so that we can start experimenting with it.

Dune fmt

It is now functional and needs to be added to dune build @fmt. It would also be nice to get the same exprience in the editor as with ocamlformat. It is probably possible to reuse what ocamlformat did. @emillon is going to ask Josh about it.

1.7

Waiting on:

• making virtual libraries using preprocessing work. This will require the use of another global hash table (@rgrinberg)
• the c_executables feature, for ctypes (@rgrinberg)

Shared artifact cache

@xclerc has a prototype. He will make it available as an experiemental feature in dune.

For the long term, Tarides will be contracted to develop a more polished version of this feature, including a daemon that manages the shared cache.

Convenience targets

@nojb is working on a feature to make it easier for users to build a single module in a library. Currently, to achive that one has to know how dune mangle names, which is tedious.

Allow to specify the PATH from the workspace file

Currently users have no control over the PATH in the various build contexts. @nojb is working on a feature to allow specifying the PATH in the dune-workspace file.

Small macro system for dune

The idea is to provide a way for users to define new stanzas via OCaml code. It is basically an improvement over the current include/promotion mechanism. We felt the need for this feature in several cases. The design space for this feature is quite large. @diml is going to write a draft RFC so that we can brainstorm.

Memoization API

Work is in progress to integrate it more in Dune, so that we can rely on it more.

Dune upgrade

This is ready in master. @diml is going to write a post about it.

Rotor integration

@diml is working on a dune rotor command, that will call rotor with all the right options. This will make it much easier to use rotor on dune workspaces.