
OCaml: Add support to iOS/Mac ARM64 - wczekalski
https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/9699
======
nindalf
I think most programming languages and associated tools will start supporting
ARM64 as a first class citizen. The current lack of support isn't due to
apathy, just constraints around ARM64 not being popular for desktop
development. For example, it's difficult to support a platform that isn't well
supported by your CI/CD provider.

Linus Torvalds previously said that ARM on the server would never be a thing
since developers didn't run ARM on their personal machines. Since this
assumption is no longer true, the ecosystem of tools will now support ARM
better and we'll see ARM on the server become a major thing in a few year's
time.

~~~
EduardoRFS
I don't think that was the case for a long time on the tooling side, OCaml has
a great support for ARM64 for a long time now, but Linux ARM64. But well most
developers aren't actually using Linux.

But a thing that is going to change is supporting iOS, one of the reasons that
this PR was approved(and it adds support to iOS) it's mostly because there is
a Mac ARM64

~~~
nix23
>But well most developers aren't actually using Linux.

What??

~~~
the_af
I'm guessing he might have meant OCaml devs? Most development shops I've
worked in used Linux servers to host their solution, and mostly Linux/Unix
based tools and dev environments (people who preferred Windows as their
desktop usually ssh'd to Linux boxes to work).

~~~
EduardoRFS
Most developers, there is a lot of places to get this information but if you
look at the stackoverflow survey, which is a survey large enough to be
relevant, you get some data around 25% of developers using Linux.

We're talking about as their computer, not servers tho, everyone uses Linux
for server

~~~
pjmlp
> everyone uses Linux for server

And here I am deploying .NET and C++ solutions on Windows Servers, strange
definition of "everyone".

~~~
yawaramin
Chill dude, 'everyone' doesn't mean 'literally everyone on the planet', it's a
figure of speech :-)

~~~
3001
This is unrelated, but your karma is 2020.

~~~
yawaramin
Lol. Not sure if that's a good thing :-D

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saagarjha
If one was ever curious why the security research device program should have
been open to everyone and available without restrictions: part of this work
was done on a jailbroken iOS device and QEMU. I doubt anyone would have been
able put in that work had they not had access to that.

~~~
EduardoRFS
There was a previous PR where I got the overall patches needed, but almost
everything was developed on the iOS + QEMU, at first I didn't had spare money
to buy an used iPhone.

The only feature developed on the real iPhone was the dynamic linking, but
because I already got the device.

Also I don't have a mac so Hackintosh, a powerful Hackintosh but nonetheless

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vmchale
Time for OCaml mobile :)

This is cool stuff, love to see functional programming growing and developing.

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cageface
Of all the niche languages out there I'd like to see break into the mainstream
Ocaml is my favorite. It seems to hit a sweet spot between pragmatism and
elegance.

------
weitzj
Does anybody know what’s the status with bitcode support? Last info from about
1.5 years ago was that the Golang and Rust toolchain did not support it, but
also Apple did not make it mandatory.

What is the current state? Does ocaml support bitcode?

~~~
EduardoRFS
There is no support to bitcode, but there is no major advantage to support it,
so it doesn't seems to be worthy

~~~
sanxiyn
tvOS and watchOS require bitcode, but yes I agree that's not major advantage
compared to work required to support it.

------
alderz
By reading the stream of comments on the PR, and from my own experience, I
feel that it is extremely cumbersome to do code reviews on Github. Atlassian's
Fisheye/Crucible looks like a better solution. Does anyone think otherwise? I
think Github has a large room of improvement in this regard; a PR is not the
same as an issue.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I don't feel like GH is really meant to be a code review platform. It does
PRs, but I assume that review should be done offline (like in other tools,
like Crucible).

We have used GH as a review platform for an open-source project, but they tend
to be relatively minor PRs. If they got hairier, we'd probably find something
else.

Personally, I really don't like having a gazillion different tools. If we can
use one tool for several purposes, then that's what I prefer. If the tool
becomes too cumbersome, then I'll work with something more specialized.

~~~
aspenmayer
Is there a good self-hosted open source platform for this? I’m new to all
this, even though I’ve been computing since I was in grade school. Coding is a
new discipline for me, and it’s hard to know the territory without a guide.
I’ve seen you around and would trust a recommendation from you.

~~~
emmelaich
I suggest
[https://www.gerritcodereview.com/](https://www.gerritcodereview.com/)

~~~
aspenmayer
Thank you, I’m going to look into this more.

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scott31
... to the language which lacks multi-threading

~~~
nephanth
Ocaml has multithreading support now though (it was merged recently iirc)

~~~
yawaramin
Not yet, but it's being prepared to merge.

