Back to Home11/16/2025, 7:45:36 PM

Linux mode setting, from the comfort of OCaml

ibobev
26 points
3 comments

Mood

informative

Sentiment

positive

Category

tech_discussion

Key topics

OCaml

Linux

kernel mode setting

functional programming

High-profile discussion · notable contributors active

There is no discussion to summarize as the story has no comments. The article "Linux mode setting, from the comfort of OCaml" on roscidus.com explores using OCaml for Linux mode setting, but without comments, there are no perspectives, conclusions, or controversies to report.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

10h

Peak period

9

Day 1

Avg / period

6

Comment distribution12 data points

Based on 12 loaded comments

Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    11/16/2025, 7:45:36 PM

    2d ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    11/17/2025, 6:03:13 AM

    10h after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    9 comments in Day 1

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    11/18/2025, 2:53:10 PM

    20h ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (3 comments)
Showing 12 comments
mos87
2d ago
4 replies
The only program written in OCaml that I think I've used is WeiDU mod installer for Infinity Engine games. Took a quick look under the bonnet too. Suffice to say, my only thought has been that should the author had chosen a sane language like say Perl (which seems to be ideally suited to what WeiDu does), the software could have been improved by many, many people.
antonvs
2d ago
1 reply
That would have required the author to write Perl. Some sacrifices are not worth making.
mos87
2d ago
2 replies
well then the functionality has been sacrificed - because few people besides the author were willing to brave hacking in OCaml I presume
StopDisinfo910
1d ago
1 reply
Just to be sure, are you complaining about the work done by the solo developer of a patching tool for a collection of old games distributed for free and thanklessly maintained for years because you dislike the language they chose for their own work which I repeat they are providing for free?
mos87
1d ago
Be sure, I'm not complaining about anything here.

Tho initially all those years back IIRC I wanted to tinker with how it installs mods for the Linux native "enhanced" editions. Otherwise I wouldn't even know what it's written in.

antonvs
1d ago
1 reply
The number of people willing to brave hacking in Perl seems to have fallen off a cliff - for good reason - so it’s a weird choice of example.
mos87
20h ago
If falling out of fashion is that good reason then yeah. At least it's not a highbrow esoteric language thingy that next to no-one in the wild used to begin with.

I've personally fixed an early noughties Perl script where one of the modules it used had changed its name (but thankfully not the interface, not significantly at least), among a couple of other compat problems. Fixing it turned out pretty straightforward even for someone who's far from a greybeard Perl "hacker".

mhd
2d ago
1 reply
Perl? Are there existing modules for the Linux KMS interface? Otherwise this would also be an off-beat language choice, and these days with only marginally more developers… (And I say that as a Perl fan)

Personally, I'm glad that this isn't yet another Rust post ;)

mos87
2d ago
1 reply
No, I haven't meant to imply that Perl should be used for the subj. But doubt it'd have proven any worse than OCaml. All depends on the programmer unsurprisingly.
ernst_klim
2d ago
> But doubt it'd have proven any worse than OCaml

Unlike Perl, OCaml is AOT compiled in a very efficient machine code, have a good static type system and have a good concurrency support. Both are not very mainstream.

_flux
2d ago
Unison could be one of the more popular programs written in OCaml.

This sort of lead into trouble at one time, as the author chose to use the OCaml serialization of data as the protocol, so synchronization between 32- and 64-bit platforms or even binaries compiled with different versions of OCaml was not possible. Eventually this was fixed, though, with custom serialization.

jasaldivara
1d ago
I don understand: If there are so many developers willing to contribute with non OCaml languages, why they don't just implement their own mod installer in Perl, Java, PHP or whatever a "sane" language is?
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ID: 45947822Type: storyLast synced: 11/16/2025, 9:42:59 PM

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