From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,SPF_FAIL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id B4088BB84 for ; Sun, 8 Feb 2009 18:22:53 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqgCADykjklQRFuwgWdsb2JhbACUOAEBFiK3T4QaBg X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.37,400,1231110000"; d="scan'208";a="34907657" Received: from furbychan.cocan.org ([80.68.91.176]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/AES256-SHA; 08 Feb 2009 18:22:26 +0100 Received: from rich by furbychan.cocan.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1LWDMN-0008OF-Av; Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:22:23 +0000 Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 17:22:23 +0000 To: Mikkel =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fahn=F8e_J=F8rgensen?= Cc: David Rajchenbach-Teller , OCaml Subject: Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] OCaml Batteries Included, alpha 3 Message-ID: <20090208172223.GB31948@annexia.org> References: <1233936696.6216.65.camel@Blefuscu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) From: Richard Jones X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 0100,:01 mikkel:01 rgensen:01 cross-:01 compilation:01 autoconf:01 ocaml:01 makefiles:01 dependencies:01 2009:98 wrote:01 typing:01 caml-list:01 partially:02 On Sat, Feb 07, 2009 at 03:21:17PM +0100, Mikkel Fahnøe Jørgensen wrote: > I think the build system is extremely important, just after library support. > > I believe the success of "scripting" and especially dynamic typing is > that you can just write some code and run it. Rarely do have to > consider make files etc. Of course, the problem sometimes just > multiplies so all end users have to deal with installing the proper > libraries, but this is partially offset by having good standard > libraries. Please don't write yet another build system to fix perceived problems with current ones. You'll just end up with N+1 build systems, making the choice even more confusing than now. And I guarantee that your new build system won't work for some combination of {cross- compilation, Windows, AIX, PowerPC-64} user, which means it'll be strictly less useful than autotools which has nearly 20 years of development and experience behind it. Instead: write better documentation for existing build systems. For example, everyone loves to hate autoconf (me included), but in actual fact you only have to write two files containing under 10 lines of code in each, to make a complete build environment for an OCaml program under autotools. This fact probably isn't obvious, because nowhere is it documented. So a good task would be to document this[1]. Similarly, plain Makefiles are easy to do, including working dependencies. Just needs to be documented. Rich. [1] A good place to start would be http://www.annexia.org/tmp/ocaml-mingw-gtk -- Richard Jones Red Hat