Bigarray support

[dbuenzli]

I see that JavaScript's typed array have now been bound to. Are there any plan to support bigarrays by implementing them on top of typed arrays ?

[vouillon]

Do you have a use case for that?

I'm wondering whether we should aim for a full implementation of bigarrays, or only focus on a subset that maps well to typed arrays (1 dimension, C layout, no complex numbers nor 64 bit integers).

[gasche]

I never actually met a bigarray with dimension bigger than 1 in OCaml source code, while 1-dimensional bigarrays are frequent (though typically for mmap-support and simpler C FFI, use cases which may not apply to js_of_ocaml code).

[avsm]

Agreed. I can't imagine anyone is really aiming for FORTRAN compatibility with Bigarrays in JavaScript. My dominant use for them is to handle external memory buffers as 1D char arrays (which works well with typed arrays).

-anil

On 20 Jan 2014, at 13:40, gasche notifications@github.com wrote:

I never actually met a bigarray with dimension bigger than 1 in OCaml source code, while 1-dimensional bigarrays are frequent (though typically for mmap-support and simpler C FFI, use cases which may not apply to js_of_ocaml code).

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[dbuenzli]

For me it's mainly for graphics purposes, raster and geometrical data. In that context, 1 dimension, C layout is what I use.

[gasche]

In case anyone wonders whether that implementation is compatible with the change on Bigarrays in trunk (or with the previous implementation), the answer is yes. Said change preserved the numerical values of existing kinds, and added a new kind value as the next consecutive integer, so using old-or-new kinds to address values in an array will work as long as it has one extra element for the new kind -- which Jérôme was careful enough to do.

[kit-ty-kate]

Maybe it should be installed like unix.js or the other installed javascript files and added to the META file with linkopts(javascript,pkg_bigarray) += "+js_of_ocaml/bigarray.js" ?

[hhugo]

@dbuenzli, @gasche, @avsm, other Bigarray user,
any pro/cons(/test) regarding the full bigarray support #132 wrt perfs ?

[dbuenzli]

Sorry have nothing to test against at the moment.

[avsm]

Not had a chance to test it myself, but just having any (slow or fast) support is great...@dbuenzli will probably care more due to his Vz work