Re: ocamlc command line suggested features

[Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

From: "thierry BRAVIER" <thierry.bravier@dassault-aviation.fr>

> I have been trying labltk since ocaml-2.99 first with: labltklink
> and now with: ocamlc -I$STDLIB/labltk labltk.cma foo.ml
> 
> * First, it made me think that an ocamlc -where option
> (similar to that of camlp4) would be useful to get $STDLIB from ocamlc.
> 
> This would make it possible to use:
> ocamlc -I `ocamlc -where`/labltk foo.ml
> 
> Remark 1: currently, I get $STDLIB from: (ocamlc -v  | some scritpt) which is
> a pain,

Indeed a -where option would be useful, I also have lots of makefiles
using the same script as you, in particular for the install procedure.

But in this precise case, I would prefer the approach suggested by
Sven Luther: to have an abbreviated notation for paths under the
standard library directory.

For instance we could have
        ocamlc -I +labltk

Remark that now that we have the autolink mechanism, package path +
library name is all you need to link in a library.
(findlib is certainly more powerful, but it needs some form of
meta-information, which is better handled outside of the compiler)

> * Second, since the documentation for labltk is short I often find myself
> using the toplevel just to check the type of say Tk.pack or
> Scale.configure.

I should have made more evident in the manual that you _must_ use
ocamlbrowser (if labltk works, it works!). Then looking for function
types is trivial. (Don't forget to configure your path to include
the labltk directory.)

> Wouldn't it be nice if we could just say:
> ocamlc -sig labltk.cma

.cma files do not contain typing information, you have to look inside
.cmi files for that. And this is what ocamlbrowser does.

Cheers,

        Jacques
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacques Garrigue      Kyoto University     garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp
		<A HREF=http://wwwfun.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/>JG</A>