Re: [Caml-list] Preferred layout for new packages

["Török Edwin" <edwin+ml-ocaml@etorok.net>]

On 11/14/2012 01:43 PM, Marek Kubica wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm kinda new to the OCaml eco system and therefore a bit confused on a
> number of issues:
> 
> 1. Build system: what to use? I have tried OMake some time ago and
> liked the automatic recompilation, but writing the OMakefiles was quite
> awful and it does not seem popular.

OMake has some nice features for more complex projects, for example
polling the FS for changes and automatically rebuilding.

However it requires your users to have OMake installed too, so
ocamlbuild has an advantage here (it is installed together with the compiler).

> What is the state of the art
> solution?

Try oasis, it provides a good starting point:
http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org/

You can later extend it with custom rules in _tags/myocamlbuild.ml if needed.

> 
> 2. Unit tests: I used OUnit which was okay, but maybe there are better
> solutions? I've seen that there is Kaputt and I have seen that there is
> https://github.com/camlunity/ocaml-quickcheck as well as
> https://github.com/vincent-hugot/iTeML which was extracted from
> batteries recently.

Kaputt seems to be a superset of OUnit feature-wise, don't know about the others.
I've only used OUnit.

> 
> 3. Stdlib: I don't mind depending on batteries and/or core, are there
> any reasons against? Especially in the unit tests it drove me nuts that
> I wasn't able to display results without writing printers, and I know
> batteries has at least a generic printer.

Are you writing an application or a library?
If you're writing a library it is probably better to avoid unneeded dependencies, or provide optional
subpackages (see the recent thread about pgocaml.batteries).
That way people who don't use batteries/core can still use your package.

Best regards,
--Edwin