Re: [Caml-list] One build system to rule them all?

[Francois Berenger <francois.berenger@inria.fr>]

On 09/10/2014 02:49 PM, Yotam Barnoy wrote:
> It appears to me that every couple of months we hear of someone
> implementing yet another build system in ocaml. Given the success of
> opam, I think it's clear that sometimes a monolithic solution, behind
> which the entire community can organize, is the best solution --
> especially for infrastructure. Looking at haskell, having cabal as the
> main build system has really helped them advance in terms of supporting
> other platforms (such as windows), and since all community efforts in
> this realm are focused on cabal, they can improve it rapidly.
>
> a. Is there any build system we can organize behind to crown as the
> official build system?
> b. What are the use-cases missing from specific build systems, that have
> driven people to use other build systems?
> c. To pick one possible candidate, if ocamlbuild were spun out of the
> compiler, could it be enhanced to cover all the main use-cases so
> (almost) everyone would be happy with it?
>
> It's just such a shame to see the ocaml community re-inventing the wheel
> over and over again, each time with some limitation so that the next
> person needs to do the same thing yet again.

It is not a shame, it is a tradition in the ocaml community! :-D
For example, almost each ocaml programmer that I know of have written a 
logger (me included, it's even in opam so that I can reinvent another 
wheel next time).

More seriously, concerning build systems, we clearly have quite some
choice on the OCaml shelf:
- obuild
- ocamlbuild
- omake
- oasis (which in fact uses ocamlbuild, don't forget that)
- jenga
- [...]

My preffered is obuild (https://github.com/ocaml-obuild/obuild),
for the terseness, readability and centralization of its build 
descriptions. I would love to see the user community of obuild grow,
so that we can get rid of more bugs, be able to compile _any_
OCaml project with it and implement even more cool features 
(contributors are very welcome).

I don't want a ring to rule them all, jut a ring that fits _my_ finger. ;)

-- 
Regards,
Francois.