Excerpts from Cristian Baboi's message of Thu Jan 31 09:57:27 +0100 2008:
> Hello!
Hello!

> I joined this list in an attempt to learn OCAML.
> I don't yet know the language, the libraries or the building and  
> distribution policies.
> In these two days since I subscribed to the list I've seen a long  
> discussion about the lack of standards.

Last two days were exceptionally very loaded.

> I have a few remarks regarding these matters and I thought to share them:
> 
> - metadata is just data
Yes, but this generally means data about data.

> - the make files are written in a well defined language
Considering GNU make, BSD make, pmake, bmake, omake... I would say no.

> - rumors say ocaml is good at writing translators
That's not rumor, that's the truth :)

[...]

> - I like the freepascal approach http://www.freepascal.org/advantage.var:
> 
> "No Makefiles Unlike most programming languages, Pascal does not need  
> Makefiles. You can save huge amounts of time, the compiler just figures  
> out itself which files need to be recompiled."

That's why ocamlbuild has been created, to make Makefiles useless.

> So, my suggestion is to agree on a *language* in which to express the  
> build/distribution/whatever and then implement it the best way you can.

That's OCaml itself using the ocamlbuild API.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Pouillard aka Ertai