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

[Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp>]

On 11/14/2012 11:41 PM, Török Edwin wrote:
> 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).

Nowadays, OPAM allows to install most OCaml software and libraries easily.

For example:
$ opam install omake
Will install omake for you.

Cf. http://opam.ocamlpro.com/ or
https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam

Regards,
F.

>> 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
>