Dune Hacking event · Dune devs & users

Stream: Dune devs & users

Topic: Dune Hacking event

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Feb 21 2022 at 16:38):

Hi folks, as a follow up from the Hackathon, we were thinking of doing a half-a-day dune hacking event, mostly related to Coq, but of course it doesn't have to be limited to it.

What do you think? I'll be happy to co-organize it, and IMO it makes much more sense as the Hackathon was too spread out as to gain the required focused hacking energy.

We will be doing something similar for jsCoq BTW

Rudi Grinberg (Feb 21 2022 at 17:33):

Let's do it. European evening times work best for me

Paolo Giarrusso (Feb 21 2022 at 17:36):

Yes! @Rodolphe Lepigre WDYT?

Rodolphe Lepigre (Feb 21 2022 at 17:43):

Yeah, sounds great! I really think it would not take much to implement a large part of the missing features.
And that kind of event would be great to help me understand better how dune works, and let me be more efficient at hacking it.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Feb 28 2022 at 19:02):

Great, I'm almost done with heavy paperwork

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Feb 28 2022 at 19:02):

@Rudi Grinberg you are up to be co-organizer?

Rudi Grinberg (Feb 28 2022 at 19:54):

Yes, I can do it

Ali Caglayan (Feb 28 2022 at 20:58):

What dates do you have in mind?

Rudi Grinberg (Feb 28 2022 at 21:05):

Let's do it before March 10 if ya'll don't mind.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 13:14):

@Rudi Grinberg before the 17th is pretty bad for me, would it work for you after?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 13:15):

if not I could adapt, but will be way more constrained

Rudi Grinberg (Mar 01 2022 at 17:26):

We can do it after the 17th. I cannot say which dates will work for me yet though

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 17:33):

Ok, thanks @Rudi Grinberg , we'll setup a doodle and find the best date then

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 17:33):

that way we can give it a bit more publicity

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 17:33):

which IMO could be interesting

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 01 2022 at 17:34):

and discuss about it in the dune meeting, I should attend the next ones without problem

Rudi Grinberg (Mar 29 2022 at 20:58):

I'm back now, so we can pick a date.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 30 2022 at 12:31):

Great @Rudi Grinberg

Ali Caglayan (Mar 30 2022 at 13:05):

Shall we start a wiki page for collecting things we want to work on?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 30 2022 at 17:29):

Yes @Ali Caglayan that seems a great idea

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 30 2022 at 17:35):

There is some tracking of stuff in this project https://github.com/coq/coq/projects/15

Ali Caglayan (Mar 30 2022 at 18:31):

I started a wiki page https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/DuneWG-2022

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 31 2022 at 09:32):

Fantastic!

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 31 2022 at 09:33):

I'd like to chat about this in the Dune meeting, which was postponed unfortunately until next Wed, so IMHO we could try to set a date next week, what do you think?

Paolo Giarrusso (Mar 31 2022 at 14:33):

@Ali Caglayan thanks for picking up the "single coqdep call" task!

Rodolphe Lepigre (Mar 31 2022 at 14:43):

Just so you know, there is a good chance I won't be able to attend the event if it happens in the next few weeks. I might still be able to work on dune stuff form time to time though, so it'd be great if the event could be recorded.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 31 2022 at 15:32):

Yes, we will record the event @Rodolphe Lepigre

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 16:51):

Hi folks, we had a brief chat about the event at the Dune Call, and we decided to go ahead!

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 16:52):

We will coordiante here, but basically the main point is to make a small announcement and set the date

Michael Soegtrop (Apr 06 2022 at 17:41):

Would some testing in how far dune works on Windows without a posix shell be appreciated during the event? IMHO this would be an important step to get a cygwin less Windows opam (another one would be to have some replacement for autoconf for the opam packages which use it).

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:10):

@Michael Soegtrop dune works fine in windows, do you have an particular issue on mind?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:11):

Opam issues are out of scope for this event

Ali Caglayan (Apr 06 2022 at 18:15):

@Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias I think @Michael Soegtrop has in mind that "if dune works fine on windows" and "coq is built using dune" then "will dune build coq fine on windows".

Michael Soegtrop (Apr 06 2022 at 18:16):

I didn't try it but the building of packages is said to be the main problem for having a cygwin free opam. In the end I wanted to make my own picture on if there are issues, mostly to be able to talk to the opam folks with first hand knowledge. I thought such an event might be a good place to do such tests, and possibly discuss the results.

Ali Caglayan (Apr 06 2022 at 18:19):

I would wager that is still a no since we do some POSIX stuff in coqdep for instance. We use the Unix library all the time. Since dune people have experience getting dune (an ocaml project) working on Windows, I would agree that they might be the people to talk to.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:19):

As I mention in https://github.com/coq/coq/issues/9199 , the build should be fine in posix-less envs.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:20):

Michael writes "Would some testing in how far dune works on Windows without a posix shell be appreciated during the event?" TTBOMK there is no such testing needed as dune works and is used by windows industrials users daily

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:20):

@Ali Caglayan the "Unix" library is ill-named, and, with a few minor limitations, works fine on windows too

Ali Caglayan (Apr 06 2022 at 18:20):

Yes dune works on windows, does it compile Coq fine on windows too?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:20):

well, it provides a cross-platform unix api, but it is not limited to OCaml unix

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:21):

Ali Caglayan said:

Yes dune works on windows, does it compile Coq fine on windows too?

It should, I can't test it tho, but that's welcome

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:21):

windows + dune issues are welcome I think, but we should check there are some first

Ali Caglayan (Apr 06 2022 at 18:22):

We probably want to mention the wiki page so people can add topics: https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/DuneWG-2022

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:22):

It'd be great indeed to test how far dune works on Windows without a posix shell, but we know it works

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:23):

@Ali Caglayan yes we need to mention that, we will prepare an announcement

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:23):

I understand there are some other issues on windows, but more related to OCaml / Opam than to dune itself

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 18:24):

I think OCaml + Windows is, in general, its own topic.

Rudi Grinberg (Apr 06 2022 at 19:11):

Looking at the coq build, there seem to be quite a few bash/sh scripts. I think rewriting those to OCaml will basically solve your problem of building coq on windows

Rudi Grinberg (Apr 06 2022 at 19:12):

Dune itself is very careful not to rely on any external binaries or Unix'isms. As Emilio mentioned, dune is well tested on Windows by the LexiFi people.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Apr 06 2022 at 19:35):

@Rudi Grinberg as of today we don't rely on any bash / sh for the core build

Ali Caglayan (May 22 2022 at 22:55):

cc @Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias @Rudi Grinberg
Let's get the ball rolling on this hacking event.

Ali Caglayan (May 22 2022 at 22:58):

Topics I would like to cover:

Benefits of using dune
Converting your Coq project to dune
Advanced dune / Coq usage (plugins etc)
(opam) Packaging with help from dune
Hacking on dune itself

I've added it here: https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/DuneWG-2022

Ali Caglayan (May 22 2022 at 23:04):

By the way, we probably don't want to make this a whole big hacking event. We could announce simply a date we want to meet and tell everybody that they are welcome to attend along.

Ali Caglayan (May 22 2022 at 23:05):

The less formal we make this the better IMO

Rudi Grinberg (May 23 2022 at 00:06):

I also wouldn’t mind a few smaller sessions over a single large one to accommodate different schedules

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (May 23 2022 at 12:37):

Great!

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (May 23 2022 at 12:37):

Yes let's get back on track

Ali Caglayan (May 23 2022 at 19:17):

How does Wednesday 22nd of June next month work for everyone?

Rudi Grinberg (May 23 2022 at 20:48):

Works fine for me

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (May 24 2022 at 10:35):

Works fine for me

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 10 2022 at 12:40):

Hi folks, maybe we can start elaborating the program and putting some wider announcement out?

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 10 2022 at 15:05):

by program, do you mean we should have presentations ready?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 10 2022 at 15:11):

@Rudi Grinberg as we want

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 10 2022 at 15:12):

we can just hack, I guess we should at least define start and end time

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 10 2022 at 15:29):

Yeah. Though, I'm not against presentations, if there's something people want to hear about I'm glad to talk about it. I just don't want to pick some random needle in a haystack about dune and ramble about it while everyone is dosing off.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 10 2022 at 18:06):

Yes, makese sense. By program I mean more "have an idea what we'd like to do and how to organize"

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 11 2022 at 16:26):

How about we keep each session to 2 hours or less. I suppose we can do 2-3 sessions each day? Depending on how people feel.

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 11 2022 at 16:27):

For software, I propose we all use discord. BBB worked poorly for me.

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 11 2022 at 16:28):

To screenshare, we can use vscode's live sharing thing. Or for emacs, vim, etc I found https://tmate.io to be quite usable

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 12 2022 at 12:20):

Yes, no BBB

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 12 2022 at 12:20):

Zoom or discord are fine

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:50):

I'l propose to repeat the "Introduction to dune API" for one hour maybe, as the last time it was not properly recorded

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:50):

WDYT folks

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

we can do 15 mins intro and working groups

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

45 mins "intro to Dune's API" for those interested

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

and rest hacking

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

We got the wiki https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/DuneWG-2022

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

I think we should tho send some small announcement maybe to ocaml's discuss?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 13 2022 at 20:51):

and also Coq's lists?

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 13 2022 at 22:22):

All o the above sound good to me. Note that we have a "HACKING.rst" document that everyone can read as well before the event

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 14 2022 at 07:15):

One thing I thought about: would it make sense to review the dune docs by a dune outsider (like me) and maybe improve it during the hackaton? I think the documentation is quite good already, but still has a few weaknesses - e.g. a "Quickstart for Coq" section would be nice and IMHO the overview/terminology section could say just a bit more (not much really just a bit) on how the various concepts work together.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 14 2022 at 10:59):

I think so @Michael Soegtrop !

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 14 2022 at 11:19):

OK. When is the hacking event planned? Is it online or in person?

Ali Caglayan (Jun 14 2022 at 11:25):

Online

Ali Caglayan (Jun 14 2022 at 11:26):

Also @Michael Soegtrop did you see my recent changes to the Coq documentation in Dune? https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coq.html

Ali Caglayan (Jun 14 2022 at 11:26):

It is going to be released with Dune 3.3

Ali Caglayan (Jun 14 2022 at 11:27):

All the Coq stuff now has it's own page

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 14 2022 at 11:32):

@Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias : thanks - and no - I started at the top and don't think I came across a link in the intro / quick start sections.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 14 2022 at 13:41):

The hacking event is planned for the 22nd

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 14 2022 at 13:42):

I thought the info was on the wiki, but it is not.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 14 2022 at 13:42):

I've added it.

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 14 2022 at 14:35):

OK, I won't come to Paris, but I plan to review the docs at the same time, do some suggestions for clarifications and maybe we can discuss these in an online meeting some time.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 14 2022 at 14:39):

Yes, that seems a good idea, note the workshop is in Paris time, but fully online

Rudi Grinberg (Jun 19 2022 at 14:28):

Just a heads up, I'll be a bit late to the event. Paris afternoon time is the middle of the night for me, but I should be able to join when I wake up.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 21 2022 at 13:46):

Hi folks, I was in holiday for the last 5 days, did we announce the day in some place in the end?

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jun 21 2022 at 13:46):

Otherwise we may not be many !

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 21 2022 at 14:17):

The date and place is right at the top of https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/DuneWG-2022

Michael Soegtrop (Jun 21 2022 at 14:18):

As I said I won't be physically there but plan to go through the dune docs at the same time and it would be helpful if people would be available for questions.