April 24, 2023

#6 - OCaml 5.1 alpha 1, Multi-version melange, React Server Components

Hey folks, here's the latest update on what I've been up to.

If you have any feedback on my work or this newsletter, or if you want to ask me a question, please feel free to reply to this directly.

As always, happy hacking! :-)

OCaml Land

• OCaml 5.1.0~alpha1 has just been released and it looks like the official release is slated for July - the nix-overlays are already OCaml 5.1 ready! - There are 30 remaining failures that we'll be addressing as new fixes are available - Cross-compilers working too!
• Jane Street has published an interesting proposal on achieving data race freedom, i.e. preventing data races statically. I learned a lot from reading this and I'm excited to follow the discussion as it unfolds.
• TJ DeVries wrote a small OCaml plugin for Neovim that provides SQL / GraphQL syntax highlighting inside %rapper / %graphql extension points:

"What did you get done this week?"

• melange#548 Melange can now be installed in compiler switches ranging from OCaml 4.13 - 5.1 - I like this one specifically because it allows to co-install melange in other compiler switches, if you have projects that already compile to native.
• We wrote the first melange documentation guide! Read it here
• Ported ReasonML to ppxlib - This made it a lot easier to support OCaml 5.1 too
• Upgraded the Reason React JSX PPX to the new JSX transform
• I played with React Server Components and there's only a small change required in Melange to support it with Next.js.

Random

• I tweeted about why I'd choose OCaml today
• TIL: testosterone predicts laboratory eating behavior of spicy food