The provider library is an experimental project that extracts and generalizes
a pattern used in the Eio project. The
goal is to make this pattern reusable in other projects.
The pattern involves using a "provider" construct that implements a set of methods that a library typically needs to provide certain functionality to a client. This allows for manipulating values that behave like objects, without using OCaml's built-in object system.
The rationale for this design is detailed in the Eio documentation.
In essence, it provides a way to handle dynamic dispatch, where the target of a function call is not known until runtime. This is particularly useful in situations where there are many ways to provide a certain functionality, and the choice of provider is determined by the user at runtime.
At its core, a provider is just a pair consisting of an internal state and a virtual-table of first-class modules operating on that state. This allows dynamic dispatch, but for example doesn't include open recursion or inheritance in its execution model. This design offers an interesting balance between object-oriented and modular programming.
Please note that this library is still considered experimental. The aim is to gain experience and feedback regarding whether this pattern can have larger applications outside of the scope of Eio.
This project is licensed under the ISC license, the same as the original Eio project.
The code documentation of the latest release is built with odoc and published
to GitHub pages here.