Re: [Caml-list] improve omake [was One build system to rule them all]

[Yaron Minsky <yminsky@janestreet.com>]

No joke.  The switch required a fair bit of cleverness on our part.
We actually had some clever intermediate stage when we were building
jenga build description files (full of s-expressions, not OCaml code)
from omake build rules, as a way of bridging the gap as we did the
conversion.  Flipping a big codebase is not for the faint of heart.

y

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 4:12 PM, Alain Frisch <alain@frisch.fr> wrote:
> On 9/23/2014 12:58 PM, Mark Shinwell wrote:
>>
>> I think the details are hazy now, but as far as we recall: your
>> statement about avoiding recomputation is correct, but a lot of md5sum
>> work happened subsequent to each compilation action in serial, within
>> the omake process.
>
>
> Ok, this could affect total compilation built time, not startup (and total
> time when nothing needs to be rebuilt).
>
>> By no means was this the only problem; another, for example, was a
>> vast amount of time spent constructing rules for an entire tree even
>> if only a small portion was being demanded to be built.
>
>
> Ok.  Do you remember if you had some clue about the source of inefficiency
> (evaluator, data structure to represent the environment, etc)?
>
>> (Of course, the worst problem with omake was probably the DSL, which
>> we found to be wholly unsuitable for large-scale reliable rule
>> engineering.  Programmability really is key.)
>
>
> YMMV.  LexiFi's experience with the omake DSL is that even if sometime
> annoying, it's possible to achieve a reasonable effect with some efforts.
> At least, the issues with the DSL did not compensate the other nice
> properties of omake.  I assume that other groups have functional build
> systems implemented with omake as well, so if people working on omake can
> improve its performances, it would be an immediate gain. That's not to say
> that we don't keep an eye open on alternative build systems such as Jenga
> (but switching an entire project to a different build system is a daunting
> task, of course).
>
>
> Alain