[wg-windows] Improving the state of OCaml on Windows

[Vincent Berthoux]

Hello,

   Thanks again for this mailing list.

We use OCaml with Linux and Windows, providing two different native 
builds to our users. The main tool is shipped as a dynamic library used 
in other parts of our software. We use the MSVC 2010 port of the OCaml 
compiler on Windows. Right now our setup use the following versions:

  * Ocaml 4.01.0
  * ocamllex/ocamlyacc
  * pprint
  * uutf
  * xmlm

The biggest pain points for us are:

   * ocamlbuild using bash behind the scenes, "luckily" we are dependent 
on Cygwin for various reasons, but it would be great if it didn't use it.
   * ocamlfind slows down compilation considerably under windows, from 
our tests with Ocaml 4.02.1. The repeated invocation of bash may be the 
main culprit here.
   * hard-coded paths in the compiler, this is relatively problematic, 
we often compiler OCaml once and distribute it among the developers, and 
environment configuration is touchy.
   * Trying to compile a library on windows is always a gamble.

We wanted to switch to OCaml 4.02.1 to be able to use ppx_deriving but 
due to some environment configuration problems we postponed the switch.

   Thanks

     Vincent