[Caml-list] Main program in C - a script

[John Whitington <john@coherentgraphics.co.uk>]

Hi,

There has been some confusion on this topic over the years, since plenty 
of OCaml programmers aren't au fait with archive managers and linkers 
and so on. Certainly I wasn't.

Anyway, here's a script which might help:

http://github.com/johnwhitington/ocaml-main-program-in-c

On Linux / OS X it builds a static library from C and OCaml sources, 
ocamlfind packages, and ocaml libraries like unix and bigarray and then 
tests it by linking an example.

On Windows, it does the same, linking the example with flexlink. 
Additionally, it builds a DLL, and test links that with the system C linker.

Here's an example config, for building the libcpdf.(a|dll) version of my 
CPDF tools:

cfiles=(cpdflibwrapper)
finalcfile=cpdflibtest
libname=cpdf
mlfiles=(cpdflib)
mlifiles=(cpdflib)
mllibs=(unix bigarray)
ocamlfind=ocamlfind
ocamlfind_packs=(camlpdf cpdf)
stubs=(camlpdf)

Unfortunately, I've been unable to work out a way to roll ocaml 
libraries like unix and bigarray into the .a so that only a single 
linker flag -lcpdf would be needed when the .a is shipped to a customer. 
If anyone does know, do tell.

In addition, it's native code only for now. But this stuff should all be 
possible with bytecode too.

The original idea for this script was from Gerd's article here:

http://www.camlcity.org/knowledge/kb_002_shared_library.html

This is not an area of my expertise, and has only been tested on the 
sample project and libcpdf, so pull requests and bug reports are most 
welcome!

With Thanks,

-- 
John Whitington
Director, Coherent Graphics Ltd
http://www.coherentpdf.com/