[Ocaml-biz] IDEs

[Brandon J. Van Every]

I have just gotten done discussing the Cameleon IDE with its principal
author.  I asked him if Cameleon was within striking distance of being
ready for 'prime time' in any hand wavy sense.  He said no, not really.
A recent status report on the Cameleon list reinforces this answer.  He
is also not terribly thrilled about Windows support at this time.  So,
as far as I'm concerned, Cameleon is out.  It is not a mature tool, it
cannot solve business problems.  It needs much more time to cook.

I see the OCaml extensions for Eclipse as the next port of call.

I believe most people are currently doing their OCaml development in GNU
Emacs.  Between GNU Emacs, XEmacs, and Vim, I don't see any reasons to
back the latter 2.  By 'back' I think I mean promote as a preferred
toolchain  for mission critical application development.  Nothing wrong
with individuals backing and using whatever they like.  But I think if
we're talking about selling businesses on the unknowns of OCaml, and
being honest about what currently has the best support, the answer is
GNU Emacs by a huge margin.  Please correct and provide insight if you
think this assessment is fundamentally mistaken.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
                                - Ed Mckenzie