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

[Mark Shinwell <mshinwell@janestreet.com>]

On 10 September 2014 13:49, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com> wrote:
> a. Is there any build system we can organize behind to crown as the official
> build system?

It may be a worthy goal, but I think it's unlikely that we will
achieve complete consensus on this front.  (Also, some of the concerns
that might be attributed to "build systems" might actually better be
the responsibility of other entities, for example package management
systems.)

> 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?

Jane Street developed jenga, a general-purpose build tool, to address
the fact that we did not know of any other tool with suitable
properties of scalability, programmability, and efficiency.  The
target use case is very large code bases (millions of lines) with rule
sets to encode all of the complexities Adrien just identified in his
email, and more.

I'm not going to make claims as to whether jenga is superior within
the wider community, although we are committed to trying to make it
work there as well as possible.

Mark