Suboptimal "Getting Started" experience with Melange

Ecosystem
1

Sorry to be back complaining :wink:

The entire melange project and especially the new website are really great. Like always in documention things change and get out of sync and outdated. Still I always really appreciate it when at least the two top sections are up to date: ā€œInstallationā€ and ā€œGetting startedā€

Now the ā€œGetting Startedā€ section under Getting started | Melange Documentation Site is suboptimal:

You give users 2 possibilities to get started:

1. Automated, using create-melange-app
2. Manually, using melange-opam-template

The second point leads to a melange template on the melange repositories, but the 1 link is very confusing:

  1. the command given fails:
npm create melange-app@latest
...
node:internal/modules/esm/resolve:839
  throw new ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND(packageName, fileURLToPath(base), null);
....

  1. The particular template leads to the following website: GitHub - dmmulroy/create-melange-app: The fastest, friendliest, and most delightful way to get started with OCaml, ReasonML, and Melange, geared towards JavaScript and TypeScript developers, where there is a 3 weeks old issue that confirms npm, pnpm, bun fail with v1.3.0(latest) (create melange-app breaking with latest release (v1.3.0) Ā· Issue #111 Ā· dmmulroy/create-melange-app Ā· GitHub)

  2. The maintainers are available on their own discord (The Caravan), that seems a little dead and a bit of topic

Question/Suggestion:
Would it be very difficult for the melange team to have one very basic template hosted under the melange repositories? This seems to me like a bit of an overcomplication for newcomers like me who really like to get started as simple as possible.

Again, thanks for melange

1 Like
2

I think the GitHub - melange-re/melange-opam-template: A simple project template using Melange with opam linked from Getting Started as

  1. Manually, using melange-opam-template

is exactly that, no?

3

Thanks for reporting this problem @koala. As a short-term measure, we have removed create-melange-app from the ā€œGetting startedā€ documentation page recommended approaches. As @andreypopp mentioned, please try using the melange-opam-template approach.

More generically, please keep reporting any issues you encounter, this will help us continue improving the toolchain and documentation for all Melange and OCaml users.

1 Like
4

Is create-melange-app not maintained much?