[Caml-list] which ocaml build system

[r.3@libertysurf.fr]

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Hello, 

I have a new question : which package build system ? 

I would like to gather thoughts on that in the ocaml.org website, because actually its advice is 'make + OcamlMakefile' and 'Omake', and I am not sure it is the best advice. 


I think that people maintaining opam and godi may have important opinions on that. Here are my personal thoughts on this. 


1) pur ocaml, 1 platform (1 person, or a team with identical computers and systems) 

ocamlbuild because : 
official tool that comes with ocaml, very handy and powerful, quite easy, clear _tags file that shows well dependencies, and support for ocamlfind. 
I espetially like the feature that handles dependencies properly and only rebuilds what is needed when rebuilding. 

I also tried Makefiles without OcamlMakefile, autotools (with ocaml-autoconf) 



2) ocaml with c dependencies, multi platforms, cross builds 

Here the best thing I found was autotools with ocaml-autoconf. 
Though autotools are not easy to handle, that was the tool for the job. lablgtk, cairo-ocaml use this for example. 

I also tried Omake but really did not like it, as we have to learn a full new "language" with many special instructions. Also, I did not succeeded in patching an Omake project (caml-images) for cross compilation. The complexity is maybe equivalent as with autotools, but learning autotools is much more rewarding as it is a reference build system for GNU builds in particular. 
Oasis looked interesting, but was not able to cross compile, and I had more confidence in autotools for multi platforms support. 


Best regards, 
William R 


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