Re: [Caml-list] Interface(.mli) location

[moosotc@gmail.com]

David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com> writes:

> moosotc@gmail.com wrote:
>> Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > It is correct that ocamldep assumes that the .ml and .mli of a given
>> > module are at the same place, but this is not the case for the rest of
>> > the compilation chain, which is either concerned with single source
>> > files (a .ml file or a .mli file) or with "compilation units" (a .cmo
>> > and .cmi files passed together, independently of where their source
>> > files were). In particular, all type-checking tools do look in -I
>> > directories to find .cmi files for the dependencies of the module
>> > being compiled (and at this stage they do not care for .mli files).
>> 
>> But the script seems to (somewhat) contradict this, i.e. after `ocamlc -I
>> d -c a.ml' ocamlc ignores the presence of .mli inside subdirectory d/,
>> producing both .cmi/.cmo when when compiling a.ml.
>
> The -I option specifies extra directories for compiled files only, so
> it's correct that the compiler ignores d/a.mli.

After sending the first post I've realized that: ocamlc -c d/a.mli was
forgotten, but even after adding that to the script things do not
change, i.e. following compilation of a.ml with -I d where d contains
a.cmi still produces both a.cmo and a.cmi in the top-level directory.

>
> Gerd is right that it's not so great that the compiler ignores d/a.cmi
> and still generates the automatic a.cmi (though I'm not convinced it's
> an error, personally). The automatic .cmi files are a pain in other
> areas (it's a nuisance in build systems, as it makes parallelisation
> harder). I'd have preferred to have something like ocamlc -ci a.ml
> being roughly equivalent to:
>
> $ ocamlc -i a.ml > a.mli
> $ ocamlc -c a.mli
> $ rm a.mli
>
> and the "gotcha" of forgetting to run ocamlc -ci a.ml being the first
> lesson in always producing .mli files, but it's a bit late for changes
> that :o)
>
>
> David 
>

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