Re: [Caml-list] ocaml support in autotools

["Sylvain Le Gall" <sylvain.le-gall@polytechnique.org>]

Hello,

On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 06:14:44PM +0200, Guillaume Rousse wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I'd like to have ocaml support in autotools (autoconf + automake), to
> avoid heavy code duplication between several projects (at least
> ocmalimages and activedvi).
> 
> Autoconf support is quite simple to do, and even already done (I easily
> found  reference to
> http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr/ftp/ocaml/misc/configure.in. But instead of
> loosely distributing those macros in a custom package, as currently done
> in Debian, I'd like to submit them directly to autoconf maintainers
> (with some modification, and with author's agreement of course). They
> are OK for this, provided there is some prior consensus in ocaml
> community first, to avoid continual macro change request of course.
> 
> Automake support is more complex, but apparently someone already tried
> it, as discussed at
> http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2003/12/c9bf9f5d4423a9259f12ccc805fe4c1
> d.fr.html
> http://sourceware.org/ml/automake/2003-12/msg00153.html
> I'd be interested in current status of this effort before further
> investigation.
> 
> Comments ?

I spend several hours (in fact weeks), trying to hack automake to make
it work with OCaml target... I don't think it could work. As said in
this thread, automake is mainly made for C/C++ like langages... In
particular if you want to compile something, you need to have a ".o"
somewhere in your compilation path (don't ask me why, that's thing i
have discovered trying to do this). Automake is actually a good tool for
doing what it is made for : provide portable build system to C/C++
project. I don't think it is a general purpose build system.

But anyway, if you think you could perform to make automake works for
ocaml, let me know !

Maybe you can have a look at the "carbon ml"/"mlmm" which  is an ocaml 
project and use automake.

Concerning autoconf, it is a great tool, the configure.in you have
already discovered is the best available source for doing ocaml stuff
with autoconf...

Kind regard
Sylvain Le Gall