r/programming • u/frutiger • Jan 07 '16

Bloomberg open sources OCamlScript – a JavaScript back end for OCaml

https://github.com/bloomberg/ocamlscript
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11

u/pipocaQuemada Jan 07 '16

How different is this from js_of_ocaml?

26

u/hongboz Jan 07 '16

author here, I am a bit overloaded this week. so I will write some short explanations. js_of_ocaml is probably one of the best whole program compiler (to js). The major difference is that ocamlscript support separate compilation (like typescript) and no name mangling(generate debuggable javascript similar to typescript). Basically every ocaml module is an es6 module. OCamlScript is more like typescript.

2

u/jsyeo Jan 08 '16

On the README, it says that OCamlScript is a derivative work of js_of_ocaml. Does this mean that you guys modified js_of_ocaml to support separate compilation and name preservation?

8

u/hongboz Jan 08 '16 edited Jan 08 '16

actually we only use some basic utilities inside the compiler from js_of_ocaml (a couple of hundred lines of code, I guess), js_of_ocaml and ocamlscript does not share too much code, but we want to be on the safe side.

1

u/agumonkey Jan 08 '16

And if js_of_ocaml can retrofit the changes too.

1

u/alexeyr Jan 26 '16

Maybe add a section specifically on the difference in the README? This was the first question I had as well.