Re: [Caml-list] Development status of the dependency generator for OCaml

[SF Markus Elfring <elfring@users.sourceforge.net>]

>>> What are you regarding as erroneous about the entries with "only a
>>> dependency on a single compiled module interface"
>>> (for bytecode, that sounds correct to me).
>>
>> A software build system which can support the programming language “OCaml”
>> to some some degree will contain generation rules for involved file types
>> as you mentioned it also.
> 
> I'm not clear how what you say relates to my question about

If you can tolerate that specific dependency specifications (like for
ML and MLI files) can be missing, …


> what you were finding erroneous.

… I find it questionable to repeat information for some CMO/CMX files
when the corresponding details should be expressed by software build
rules already.


> How is ocamldep supposed to know what you care and don't care about?

I assume that you care also for the safe building of OCaml software.
How many rules are you going to express in your build scripts by default for
this use case?


>>> foo.cmi:
>>> foo.cmo: foo.cmi
>>>
>>> should simply not be printed, and be assumed to work with implicit
>> rules?
>>
>> Yes. - In principle for the default data export variant.
> 
> For the second example, the default is very clearly not going to change
> (since ocamldep already exists).

Can further feature requests adjust the discussed software situation a bit more?

* “ocamldep -all” does not express dependencies on MLI files.
  https://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=7593

* It seems that the main developers have got communication difficulties
  with my style of clarification requests (or bug reports).


> Personally, I'd find it very irritating to have to remember to add %.cmo: %.cmi
> to my Makefiles

If you are using such make scripts, you have to specify make rules so that
the desired OCaml commands will be called.


> (I'd already be irritated, as it would imply I was not using jbuilder,
> but that's a separate story...)
Do you prefer to use more advanced software development environments?


>> I looked into a few OCaml build configurations where the desired
>> dependency handling seems to work better with explicit make rules and
>> corresponding automatic rule generation.
> 
> What works better and in which configurations?

Would you like to look into published development approaches a bit more?

* https://github.com/elfring/ocamlbuild/blob/0ae41f82882ac28e4c6b375f1e2bfcf3425c7a80/GNUmakefile.am#L499

* https://github.com/elfring/Coccinelle-20160205/commit/8fe9e79f41668bc2e3bd7e682bec114dbee2854b


Regards,
Markus