[Caml-list] Re: GODI is shutting down

[Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>]

On 25-07-2013, Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp> wrote:
> On 07/25/2013 02:05 AM, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
>>> I think that's fair, but the devil is in the details. The core of OASIS
>>> is sound, but is hampered by its need to build on top of ocamlfind
>>> and ocamlbuild, and the ensuing impedance mismatches that follow (e.g.
>>> manually editing _tags files, and trying to debug which tool a failure
>>> happens in is an advanced operation). OPAM packages represent an output
>>> collection of (several optionally built) ocamlfind packages, and
>>> OASIS sits awkwardly in between these two right now, with ocamlbuild
>>> crashing the party and getting drunk in the kitchen.
>>
>> While we're at it (and hoping a diversion might restores some
>> constructiveness in this discussion), I have also been thinking about
>> this aspect of OASIS that I don't really like. I use ocamlbuild
>> -use-ocamlfind, but I'd rather build my _tags and myocamlbuild.ml
>> files completely separately from OASIS
>
> Personnally, I'd rather have a single human-readable file containing all 
> the build information.
>
> With the current setup in oasis used by a developper, you get:
> a _tags file, a myocamlbuild.ml and you need a Makefile
> on top of that (with some parts automatically generated) to pass more 
> options to ocamlbuild.
> Amazing!
> But at least I see a clear culprit (ocamlbuild).
>

It depends a lot. If you use
$> oasis setup -setup-update dynamic

You generate a very small set of files (no _tags and no myocamlbuild if
they are not here). I use that for certain project.

I think your problem is that OASIS try to generate standalone
installation (i.e. a package that doesn't depend on OASIS to build),
which means I have to pre-generate files for ocamlbuild, just as
automake...

Now, if the community as a whole say that we don't need a standalone
generation and can rely on OASIS to build, it would make my life 10x
easier (getting rid of super-complex 2-stage setup, ocaml-data-notation,
ocamlmod, ocamlify...)

Cheers,
Sylvain Le Gall
-- 
Website:     http://sylvain.le-gall.net/
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