autoconf input for ocaml applications

autoconf input for ocaml applications

[Jean-Christophe Filliatre]

Hello ocamlers,

I wrote an autoconf input  for ocaml applications that could be useful
for others. It is available here (together with a suggested Makefile):

    http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr/software.en.html

It checks for  ocaml compilers and tools and  determines the following
variables:

   OCAMLC        "ocamlc" if present in the path, or a failure;
                 or "ocamlc.opt" if present with same version number as ocamlc
   OCAMLOPT      "ocamlopt" (or "ocamlopt.opt" if present), or "no"
   OCAMLBEST     either "byte" if no native compiler was found, 
                 or "opt" otherwise
   OCAMLDEP      "ocamldep"
   OCAMLLEX      "ocamllex"
   OCAMLYACC     "ocamlyac"
   OCAMLLIB      the path to the ocaml standard library
   OCAMLVERSION  the ocaml version number

Then it  is easy  to write  a Makefile compiling  with the  best ocaml
compiler available without requiring the  user to specify which one it
is. (Similarly for installation issues.)

CREDITS: this  autoconf input was built  on one sent to  me by Georges
Mariano.

-- 
Jean-Christophe FILLIATRE
  mailto:Jean-Christophe.Filliatre@lri.fr
  http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr

Re: autoconf input for ocaml applications

[Michael Hicks]

> It checks for  ocaml compilers and tools and  determines the following
> variables:

   ...

Thanks for the excellent tool!

Another useful variable to check for, in the case of the byte-code compiler,
is whether it was compiled with native or user-level threads, as the Thread
interface differs for each (e.g. user-threads support the kill operation but
native threads don't), and there are some other, more subtle differences.

Mike

-- 
Michael Hicks
Ph.D. Candidate, the University of Pennsylvania
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mwh            mailto://mwh@dsl.cis.upenn.edu
*There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest; He sent in ten
*different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win.  
*Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.