Re: [Caml-list] Obtaining module dependencies from within OCamlbuild plugin

[Dario Teixeira <dario.teixeira@nleyten.com>]

Hi Gabriel,

> In OCamlbuild, most of the dependencies are detected dynamically while
> the compilation runs (typically the process of producing a target (eg.
> foo.cma) will run code that will decide to recursively produce lots of
> targets (eg. modules listed in foo.mllib), and those are the dynamic
> dependencies). Command_deps_of_tags returns the static dependencies
> that have been specified by tags, by using Command.dep and
> Command.pdep to associate dependencies to specific tags.

Yeah, I was already afraid that was the case.  There is of course an
alternative strategy that could have been used instead: compute all the
dependencies (by recursively invoking OCamldep et al) before starting 
the
compilation proper.  Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages,
of course.


> You cannot obtain the set of dependencies of a target without actually
> trying to build it. (If you were interested in this for performance
> reason, a reasonable idea would be to cache the dependencies of the
> last build and replay them optimistically, but I assume that's not
> your point here.)

As I'm sure you've guessed, my interest in this problem derives from
no-alias-deps + module aliases, not performance... (see reply to the
other related message)

Kind regards,
Dario Teixeira