[MLton] Welcome to Vesa Karvonen

[Stephen Weeks]

Welcome to Vesa Karvonen, who has joined the MLton mailing list.  Vesa
has experience with both SML and OCaml, and has observed the terrible
lack of library support in the SML world.  He's interested in
improving the situation, including documenting and packaging the SML
libraries that are currently inside MLton.  He's also interested in
design and implementation of ML-style languages.  

Vesa writes:

> Ideally, I'd like to see something like Boost for C++
> (http://www.boost.org/) except, of course, for SML. A process like SRFI
> (http://srfi.schemers.org/) might be another alternative.
> 
> Some infrastructure requirements for producing high quality libraries:
> 
> * Shared repository and mailing list for collaborative work
> * Documentation tool(s) & standards
> * Common build framework (and possibly tool)
> * Testing framework(s) and tool(s)
> * Package system (support) for installing libraries
> * Peer review process

Vesa, this all looks great, and I agree with you that libraries is one
of, if not the biggest weaknesses of SML.  I'll be glad to see some
efforts in that direction.  Please feel free to initiate discussions
on this list.  If it ever becomes necessary due to increased traffic
or a desire for a different audience, I'd be happy to setup a new list
(libraries@mlton.org).

BTW, I have some thoughts on layering a package system on top of MLBs,
which feels to me like it could work well.  I'll bring them up
whenever that topic is discussed (or sooner if I manage to find time).

Welcome to the list!