ReScript Retreat
Accelerating ReScript development through meeting in-person.
ReScript is exclusively developed by volunteers. Some help out in their free time, some are lucky to do it in their work time, but overall there is no single developer who exclusively works full-time on the advancement of the ReScript project.
That's not unusual for many open-source projects, but we want to be sustainable long-term. One way to not only accelerate development but also improve collaboration between contributors is to meet together in-person and hack on things. In this article, we explain what usually happens on such a "Retreat".
Last year, from the 23rd to the 26th of May, the ReScript Association invited many contributors to hack on ReScript. In the end almost all of them responded to the invitation and thus, 15 people from all over the world traveled to Vienna, Austria to meet in person, to do talks, discussions and decisions about and contributions to the ReScript toolchain.
Talks
Not everybody is on the same level of knowledge about the parser, compiler or other tools. Talks are a great way to get to a better collective understanding before the real work gets started. In 2024 we had the following talks:
Brief overview of parser development, by Maxim Valcke (@_binary_search)
Intro to compiler development, by Cristiano Calcagno (@ccrisccris)
The full talk is also available here: Youtube Link.
Talk about editor tooling, by Gabriel Nordeborn (@___zth___)
Group work
Our contributors split up in multiple small groups of 2-4 people. Every group had a specific topic assigned:
New Build System (Codename rewatch)
rescript-lang.org Playground Output
ReScript Core and how to include it in the compiler
loops, foreach, iterators
Syntax, JSX
Discussions
We also did group discussions about how to elevator pitch ReScript and about ReScript's roadmap.
The full results of this discussions and the group work can be read at the ReScript forum: https://forum.rescript-lang.org/t/ann-rescript-retreat-roadmap-summary-2024/5275
Results
Almost a year later, most of the things that got started at the retreat, got finished or at at least very far in development.
We moved the new "Core" standard library into the compiler. Only needs some minor tweaks and documentation.
We are getting closer into having "rewatch" be our new main build system, it should now even work correctly in "dev" mode.
We merged first-class
RegExpsyntax.We merged support for pattern-matching on
dicts.We removed curried mode.
We removed
.mlcompilation support.Based on the above and other cleanups we were able to introduce a new abstract syntax tree which will allow for cleaner language design. Of course a compatibility layer is available.
And more. But that's material for another release blog post.
Food, Drinks and Leisure
After every hard working day, we finished the day with a nice dinner. For instance, one day we gathered together at a viennese winery in the evening.
At the last day we of course also did some city sightseeing and enjoyed a final Viennese lunch.
Conclusion
After the retreat, most participants stated that they want to do it again and overall it was a very productive but also fun event for all of us. And we are happy to announce that there will be a ReScript Retreat in 2025, from the 3rd - 6th of May, once again in Vienna, Austria. And a similar number of participants will attend.
Our Sponsors
The ReScript Association paid for all the participants hotel rooms and some of the lunches and dinners. We worked at a coworking space which was paid for by the Vienna-based company cca.io, which also happens to employ two of our contributors.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank all contributors who are so invested into this language that they don't hesitate to travel the globe, some even with their families. Thank you so much!
@bloodyowl, @cknitt, @cometkim, @cristianoc, @fhammerschmidt, @glennsl, @IwanKaramazow, @jfrolich, @JonoPrest, @mununki, @rolandpeelen, @ryyppy, @shulhi, @tsnobip, @zth.
