bucklescript post

package.json

@@ -4,7 +4,6 @@
   "license": "MIT",
   "scripts": {
     "develop": "gatsby develop",
-    "start": "npm run develop",
     "build": "gatsby build",
     "serve": "gatsby serve",
     "deploy": "gatsby build && gh-pages -d public -b master"

src/posts/2021-03-12-on-ocaml-and-the-js-platform.md

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "On OCaml and the JS platform"
+tags: reason ocaml rescript
+---
+
+[ReScript](https://rescript-lang.org/), née
+[BuckleScript](https://bucklescript.netlify.app/), is a state-of-the-art
+compiler that used to target OCaml (and Reason), but is fast moving away from
+its parent language. OCaml compatibility is high on my list of desirable
+features, and I've been disillusioned with the direction the project has veered
+into. So I took matters into my own hands. Read on!
+
+<!--more-->
+
+## What ReScript looks like today
+
+The BuckleScript project started out as an OCaml to JavaScript compiler. Last
+year, after a surprising announcement and discussions that I'll choose not to
+rehash in this space, ReScript [has made it
+clear](https://rescript-lang.org/blog/bucklescript-is-rebranding) that they'll
+be pursuing a new direction for the project, which includes:
+
+- Not supporting newer versions of Reason
+- Dropping support for OCaml features that are not deemed necessary for the
+  success of ReScript
+  - An example is the [recent
+    move](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/pull/4967) to
+    really break away from OCaml by removing support for the OCaml object
+    system (it's even
+    [removed](https://github.com/rescript-lang/ocaml/commit/803c6e676d2be50b10e39a49e763cb8f1396c0e7)
+    from the OCaml compiler in ReScript "mode" )
+- [Dropping support for custom
+  PPXes](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/pull/4701) such as
+  `ppx_deriving` (the `deriving` attribute is now exclusively interpreted as
+  `bs.deriving`)
+- Focusing almost excusively on the "ReScript syntax", which lacks many common
+  features present in OCaml (e.g. custom infix operators, weird syntax for
+  lists, and others)
+- not staying up-to-date with the OCaml release cycle
+  ([source](https://github.com/rescript-lang/rescript-compiler/wiki))
+
+## So, what have I been up to?
+
+I mentioned above that the direction of ReScript doesn't align with my personal
+use cases. Specifically, I'm interested in as much compatibility as possible
+with the OCaml ecosystem (after all, BuckleScript stands on the shoulders of
+giants), and the possibility of sharing code with native OCaml projects — this
+is extremely useful for sharing types and common business logic, and I use it
+in all my projects.
+
+### BuckleScript on OCaml 4.12
+
+I've been maintaining my own fork of BuckleScript since the summer 2020. A few
+days ago, I started exploring bumping the OCaml version. And you know what?
+Turns out updating the compiler version isn't hard at all (it only took 3
+days!).
+
+The end result is a state of the art compiler for the JavaScript platform
+(preserving all features of BuckleScript), that diverges from upstream in the
+following ways:
+
+- uses Dune as the build tool instead of (a very custom, patched, outdated version of)
+  [ninja](https://ninja-build.org/)
+  - Dune is used to build both the compiler and to build JS projects
+- most tooling in the OCaml ecosystem just works (PPXes too!)
+  - this is especially important as [`ocaml-lsp`](https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp)
+    is dropping support for OCaml 4.06 soon.
+- Reason is bundled as a library inside the compiler, instead of shelling out
+  to `refmt`, which always made reason slower than it had to be in BuckleScript
+  <sup id="fnref:1"><sub><a href="#fn:1">1</a></sub></sup>.
+- we get all the cool enhancements made to OCaml in recent history _for free_,
+  including `letop` bindings and many new and improved standard library
+  modules.
+- supports monorepos trivially, without the need for features like "pinned
+  dependencies" <sup id="fnref:2"><sub><a href="#fn:1">2</a></sub></sup>
+
+## Looking onwards
+
+What does the future look like? I'm not sure. I built something that is useful to me,
+and I'm planning on maintaining it for my own use cases. If more folks are interested,
+there are some really interesting things that this could unlock:
+
+- deeper dune integration (perhaps in Dune itself, if this project ends up
+  being adopted)
+- move away from an ad-hoc `bsconfig.json` way of specifying configuration,
+  towards something more established in the OCaml community
+- support for consuming OPAM packages directly (this is possible with some
+  heavy lifting in userspace today)
+- eventually release and distribute to OPAM as well
+
+## Feedback
+
+If any of this sounds useful to you, I'd love for you to reach out to me. I
+think there's a opportunity here to make something really great that has the
+best of both worlds: our favorite OCaml on the world's most popular platform.
+
+The project lives
+[here](https://github.com/anmonteiro/bucklescript/tree/fork-4.12.0+BS). At the
+time of this writing, you need [`nix`](https://nixos.org/) to get the correct
+packages in order to build the project. This limitation can be lifted as soon
+as folks are interested in trying out the project.
+
+Please send me a message on Twitter
+[@_anmonteiro](https://twitter.com/_anmonteiro), or otherwise catch me on the
+OCaml / Reason Discord servers.
+
+Thanks for reading and happy hacking!
+
+---
+
+<div id="fn:1">
+  <sup><sub>1</sub></sup> <sub>I'm going to avoid talking specifically about
+  the Reason project in this post. However, rest assured that it'll keep being
+  maintained going forward, as I'm one of the maintainers.
+  <a href="#fnref:1">
+    <img draggable="false" class="emoji" alt="↩" src="/img/top.svg">
+  </a></sub>
+</div>
+
+<div id="fn:2">
+  <sup><sub>2</sub></sup> <sub>which, in my opinion, was never needed in the
+  first place, and could trivially have been implemented by checking mtime of
+  the dependent files (which is also how I implemented monorepos last summer in
+  BuckleScript)
+  <a href="#fnref:2">
+    <img draggable="false" class="emoji" alt="↩" src="/img/top.svg">
+  </a></sub>
+</div>