ocaml: Adjust COMMIT_MSG/TODO

[Greg Troxel (via pkgsrc-wip) <commit-notify%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

Module Name:	pkgsrc-wip
Committed By:	Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>
Pushed By:	gdt
Date:		Mon Oct 20 14:30:32 2025 -0400
Changeset:	7f33350c1d336f02f4293f7face7a8224bae9a4e

Modified Files:
	ocaml/COMMIT_MSG
	ocaml/Makefile
	ocaml/TODO

Log Message:
ocaml: Adjust COMMIT_MSG/TODO

This is minor work towards an eventual import.

To see a diff of this commit:
https://wip.pkgsrc.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=pkgsrc-wip.git;a=commitdiff;h=7f33350c1d336f02f4293f7face7a8224bae9a4e

Please note that diffs are not public domain; they are subject to the
copyright notices on the relevant files.

diffstat:
 ocaml/COMMIT_MSG | 70 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 ocaml/Makefile   |  7 ++----
 ocaml/TODO       | 15 ++++++++----
 3 files changed, 81 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diffs:
diff --git a/ocaml/COMMIT_MSG b/ocaml/COMMIT_MSG
index ddc680e361..d456ae9419 100644
--- a/ocaml/COMMIT_MSG
+++ b/ocaml/COMMIT_MSG
@@ -1,4 +1,70 @@
 This package provides ocaml major version 5.
 
-It was started without any of the patches to find out
-if they were really needed, and it built fine without.
+Packaging changes:
+
+  All of the patches from 4.14 were dropped, as an experiment to see
+  if they are really needed.  ocaml builds, appears to work, and
+  programs compiled with it appear to work, so no patches have been
+  carried forward.
+
+  \todo Look at the patches, and maybe drop them from 4.14 to see if
+  they are unnecessary there.
+
+Upstream NEWS, less bugfixes, minor improvements, and Windows things:
+
+* 5.4.0
+
+  Labelled tuples
+  Immutable arrays
+  Array literal syntax support for immutable arrays and floatarrays (through type-directed disambiguation)
+  Atomic record fields
+  Four new standard library modules: Pair, Pqueue, Repr, and Iarray
+  Restored "memory cleanup upon exit" mode
+
+* 5.3.0
+
+  Syntax for deep effect handlers
+  Re-introduced statistical memory profiling
+  More space-efficient implementation of Dynarray
+  utf-8 encoded Unicode source files and modest support of Unicode identifiers
+  Improved metadata on the pairs of declarations and definitions for merlin.
+
+* 5.2.0
+
+  [experimental]
+  Reintroduced GC compaction
+  Restored native backend for POWER 64 bits
+  ThreadSanitizer support
+  New Dynarray module
+  New -H flag for hidden include directories
+  Project-wide occurrence metadata support for developer tools
+  Raw identifiers
+  Local open in type expressions
+
+* 5.1.0
+
+  [experimental]
+  Many runtime performance regression and memory-leak fixes (dynlinking, weak array, weak hash sets, GC with idle domains, GC prefetching).
+  Restored support for native code generation on RISC-V and s390x architectures.
+  Restored Cygwin port.
+  Reduced installation size (50% reduction)
+  Compressed compilation artefacts (.cmi, .cmt, .cmti, .cmo, .cma files)
+
+* 5.0.0
+
+  [not marked experimental but clearly it is -gdt]
+  OCaml 5.0.0 introduces a completely new runtime system with support
+  for shared memory parallelism and effect handlers.
+
+  As a language, OCaml 5 is fully compatible with OCaml 4, down to the
+  performance characteristics of your programs. In other words, any
+  code that works with OCaml 4 should work the same with OCaml 5.
+
+  The currently known exceptions to this rule are:
+
+      The removal of many long-deprecated functions and modules
+      Changes to the internal runtime API
+      The performance of ephemerons is currently (and temporarily) strongly degraded
+
+  For a comprehensive list of changes and details on all new features,
+  bug fixes, optimisations, etc., please consult the changelog
diff --git a/ocaml/Makefile b/ocaml/Makefile
index 7797545134..0585836d5b 100644
--- a/ocaml/Makefile
+++ b/ocaml/Makefile
@@ -1,12 +1,7 @@
 # $NetBSD: Makefile,v 1.148 2023/04/09 07:28:27 wiz Exp $
 
-# Please do not update to ocaml 5.x without discussion, as the
-# consensus is mostly that those versions are not yet baked, and will
-# cause hard-to-debug problems.
 DISTNAME=	ocaml-5.4.0
 CATEGORIES=	lang
-# unreliable
-#MASTER_SITES=	https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-5.2/
 MASTER_SITES=	${MASTER_SITE_GITHUB:=ocaml/}
 GITHUB_TAG=	${PKGVERSION_NOREV}
 
@@ -64,6 +59,7 @@ CONFIGURE_ARGS+=	--enable-imprecise-c99-float-ops
 INSTALL_MAKE_FLAGS+=	SHELL=${SH:Q}
 .endif
 
+# \todo Explain.
 .if ${OPSYS} == "Linux"
 INSTALL_UNSTRIPPED=	yes
 .endif
@@ -88,6 +84,7 @@ fix-darwin-install-name:
 		install_name_tool -id `${ECHO} $$f | ${SED} -e 's,${DESTDIR},,g'` $$f; \
 	done
 .endif
+
 .PHONY: fix-man-extension
 post-install: fix-man-extension
 fix-man-extension:
diff --git a/ocaml/TODO b/ocaml/TODO
index 7cfdf49f9e..234c680e77 100644
--- a/ocaml/TODO
+++ b/ocaml/TODO
@@ -1,10 +1,17 @@
 - improve COMMIT_MESSAGE
+  + review dropped patches
+
 - create meta-pkgs/bulk-test-ocaml and test
+
 - examine unresolved upstream 5.x issues
-  + https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/issues/11913
-  + https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/issues/13262
+  + https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/issues/11913 [stale]
   + https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/13320
-  in light of the prominent caution at
+
+- in light of the prominent caution at
     https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/README.adoc
-  - run tests and assess
+  run tests of ocaml programs:
+  + unison
+  + (call for tests on unison-users)
+
 - fix native compiler build
+  (it's not clear what this means, but test native code generation with unison)es