Forced linking and Ocamlbuild

Forced linking and Ocamlbuild

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi,

I'm using Ocamlbuild with the findlib plugin listed on the Wiki.
In this setting, how does one force a given module to always be
linked into the final executable, even if it's not referenced
anywhere?  (I realise there's always the option of adding a
dummy reference, but I'm looking for a cleaner solution).

Note that the package is of course listed under "true" in the
top-level _tags file, but it's being pruned out from the actual
invocation of ocamlfind.  Normally this is a sensible approach,
but in this case I want to force linking.  Also, I've searched
into the (long) list of built-in tags, but couldn't find anything
resembling this purpose.

While I can of course explicitly change the myocamlbuild plugin
so that invocations of the compiler always append the module I
want to link, I wonder if there's not already a cleaner, more
general solution that I may have missed.

Thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Dario Teixeira

Re: [Caml-list] Forced linking and Ocamlbuild

[Daniel Bünzli]

> (I realise there's always the option of adding a
> dummy reference, but I'm looking for a cleaner solution).

Is it really "unclean" ?

Suppose you'd like to use ocamldoc to output a dot file to understand
the dependencies of your program, if you manage to achieve what you
want to do you'll miss that dependency.

The more info there is in the source (vs. the build procedure) the
easier it is to understand the program.

Best,

Daniel

Re: [Caml-list] Forced linking and Ocamlbuild

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi,

> Suppose you'd like to use ocamldoc to output a dot file to understand
> the dependencies of your program, if you manage to achieve what you
> want to do you'll miss that dependency.
> 
> The more info there is in the source (vs. the build procedure) the
> easier it is to understand the program.

In general I would agree, but in this particular instance the extra
module is just a plugin which registers itself with the main module
via a callback.  It's entirely optional and not a dependence of the
main program -- hence why an automated build system thinks it may
be safely discarded.

Cheers,
Dario Teixeira