Re: what's in the future for ocamlbuild?

[Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>]

Hello,

On 12-03-2008, Erick Tryzelaar <idadesub@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> - I love that ocamlbuild is bundled with ocaml as then it's one less
> dependency for someone building an ocaml package, but I don't like how
> it then ties it's release to ocaml releases. First, since new versions
> of ocaml aren't really publicly planned, it's hard to know when a
> feature might be added to ocamlbuild. Second, we can't use ocamlbuild
> to build a system if the system compiler isn't 3.10. I don't think
> ocamlbuild actually uses anything from 3.10. So, it would be nice if
> there was also a separate release from ocaml that we could install
> along side of an older ocaml install.
>

Indeed, i would have prefer to have ocamlbuild outside ocaml compiler
package. The reason for ocamlbuild in OCaml is to solve the complex
scheme to build camlp4 (as far as i can remember). This is unfortunate,
but we can't blame INRIA to build a tool and test it against its more
complex compilation scheme.

> - A way for the community to add support for other languages. It may
> not make sense to code in the OCaml tree support for things like Java
> or the QT library. It also might not really be appropriate to be done
> through OSR either.
>
> - ocamlbuild currently can't run on windows's cmd.exe, which is a
> shame. This bug report suggests that it's not planned on changing
> either:
>
> http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4388
>

I don't think INRIA team are against accepting your patches, if it fits
correctly in OCaml. Most of the time, the first step is to provide a
patch... If you have the time to correct this problem on your own, i
think INRIA team will happily integrate your patch.

Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall