# OCaml Automnal dev meeting (15 and 16 November 2023)

# Wednesday 15 November

## Tour-de-table: what are you working on (45 minutes)

## High-level and roadmap discussion (1 hour)

- Removing dynlink_compilerlibs:
- MSVC port
- Relocatable compiler
- Which formal semantics for OCaml? (Osiris, Flambda optimisations)
- Memory management: aren't we over-using or wrongly using mmap() ?
Wouldn't it be safer to use malloc() and perhaps posix_memalign()
everywhere, and offer options to link with our preferred malloc library?
- MetaOCaml mode for the lexer and parser

## Roadmap for maintenance version (15 minutes)

- ZSTD fixes for 5.1.1 and beyond
- Plan for 4.14.2 LTS

# Thursday 16 November

## POPL London meeting date (5 minutes)

- Current proposal: Mon 15th January or Tue 16th.

## High-level and roadmap discussion 2 (30 minutes)

- Syntax and API for effect handlers

## Feedback on the last three months (30 minutes)

- Github moderators
- Merging faster trivial PRs
- Triaging meetings
- Labelling

## RFCs, PRs, issues awaiting a decision (55 minutes) :
- #12084: Check link order when creating archive and when using ocamlopt
(make sure we are happy with it and it gets properly reviewed)
- #12307: Evolving the Digest module
- #10653, #12720: Semantics and compilation of optional arguments now that the syntactic arity proposal is merged: can we agree on the right semantics to implement?
- #12719: From DLS to TLS: what is the proper design?
- #12579 : OS-based Synchronisation for Stop-the-World Sections.
Where is the performance gain? in the uncontended case? in the contended case?
Is it worth going straight to futexes, or could we accept to use only POSIX
threads primitives?
- #12459: Random.int_in_range
- #12407: Resource-safe C interface: caml/fail.h
Should we bless and document the encoding of exceptions as values with bit 1 set?
- #12209: stdlib documentation: superscript fixes
- #11619: Apply Cmm peephole optimizations to the final results of expressions (take 2)