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

[Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>]

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While there was no 'conclusion' to this thread, if I had to come up with
one, it would be that we have a bunch of build tools which are all not
amazing at this point in time. We have some DSL-based build tools and some
ocaml-based build tools, and all of them need a lot of love to get to a
good state.

My personal view is that we (as a community) should work at getting at
least one DSL tool to be really great. I'm sure Jenga (an ocaml-based tool
which seems more like a build-tool engine) will continue to be developed by
Jane Street no matter what, so is there a DSL-based build system that we
can converge on to use and improve? The contenders for this slot appear to
be omake, obuild, and ocp-build. I'm more than willing to switch to one of
these if I know that other people will as well, and that it will be
actively developed (preferably on github). More users = more invested
parties = more development potential. Conversely, continuing to spread the
community's attention between these tools (as well as ocamlbuild, which
seems destined to stagnate) before any one of them is top notch seems to me
to be detrimental to ocaml's health as an ecosystem.

BTW Anil: is assemblage supposed to be an entire build toolchain, or is it
only supposed to write makefiles (as the description in the readme states)?

-Yotam

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Stéphane Glondu <steph@glondu.net> wrote:

> Le 10/09/2014 20:59, Yotam Barnoy a écrit :
> > So here are some requirements I can think of (using some of the
> > suggestions that have been brought up):
> > - Easy to use, especially for small projects (large projects can afford
> > to put more time into their build systems)
> > - Abstract away platform considerations as much as possible. No
> > dependence on specific shells and POSIX utilities.
> > - Allows compilation of C files, which is quite common in ocaml packages.
> > - Scalable to many directories and files
> > - Uses ocamlfind to locate packages
> > - Handles camlp4 and ppx
> > - Parallel & incremental compilation
>
>  - Support of platforms without ocamlopt. Many build systems assume that
> ocamlopt is available and have to be called specially (or even patched)
> when it is missing, which complicates packaging on these platforms.
>
> --
> Stéphane
>
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