Learning Async

If your taking your first steps in Janestreet’s Async library, here’s some sources of help & support:

My top 5 sources of Async Documentation

  1. Official Janestreet Docs for Async/Core: https://ocaml.janestreet.com/ocaml-core/latest/doc/ These are generated from the .mli’s in the Async source and you will quickly find places where ocamldoc has failed to cope with Core/Async complex module structure. In this case, I recommend the source code: https://github.com/janestreet/async
  2. Dummy’s guide to Async, a useful intro to bind, upon and map (the 3 fundemental functions): http://janestreet.github.io/guide-async.html
  3. Real World OCaml chapter on Async, covers Deferred basics, Ivars, Reader/Writer, TCP server, running the scheduler, Command, Pipes, Monitors, Delays, Choose and System Threads: https://realworldocaml.org/beta3/en/html/concurrent-programming-with-async.html
  4. Yaron Minsky (one of co-authors of RWO) provides a nice little example of Async’s RPC libraries: https://bitbucket.org/yminsky/core-hello-world
  5. My favourite project for example Async and Lwt code is cohttp: https://github.com/mirage/ocaml-cohttp, otherwise there’s OPAM’s list of Async dependent project, useful for finding more example code: http://opam.ocamlpro.com/pkg/async.109.38.00.html

Community

Google group for Janestreet’s Core & Async, the JS team are really helpful 🙂 : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ocaml-core

Async issue tracker on Github is quiet but still a good point to start a conversation: https://github.com/janestreet/async/issues?state=open

Installation

I recommend the installation chapter of Real World Ocaml: https://realworldocaml.org/beta3/en/html/installation.html and install instructions for OPAM: http://opam.ocamlpro.com/doc/Quick_Install.html

Janestreet provide some installation hints, though this is covered for comprehensively in RWO (linked above): http://janestreet.github.io/installation.html

Very light background reading: https://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/100

 

 

Leave a Reply