[TYPES] First release of AlphaCaml

[Francois Pottier]

Dear all,

[You are receiving this message because I believe you have some
interest in Objective Caml and/or in alpha-conversion issues.]

It is my pleasure to announce the initial release of alphaCaml.

AlphaCaml is a tool that turns a so-called ``binding specification'' into an
Objective Caml compilation unit. A binding specification resembles an
algebraic data type declaration, but also includes information about names and
binding. AlphaCaml is meant to help writers of interpreters, compilers, or
other programs-that-manipulate-programs deal with alpha-conversion in a safe
and concise style.

In short, alphaCaml can be understood as an alternative to Fresh Objective
Caml. It takes the form of a code generator and a library, instead of a set of
patches to the compiler and runtime system. Furthermore, its binding
specification language is more expressive.

An introduction to alphaCaml is available at

  http://cristal.inria.fr/~fpottier/publis/fpottier-alphacaml.pdf

The source code is available at

  http://cristal.inria.fr/~fpottier/alphaCaml/alphaCaml-20050609.tar.gz

Installation requires Objective Caml and findlib. A GODI
package should also be available soon -- watch out for it.

This is an initial release. There is a lot of progress to be made. Comments,
suggestions, and criticism are welcome. Authors of systems (written in
Objective Caml) where alpha-conversion is an issue are warmly encouraged to
try it out and to make their impressions public!

Best regards,

-- 
François Pottier
Francois.Pottier at inria.fr
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/