README

car: A collection of aliases for common tasks on OCaml projects using ocamlbuild. (cons was taken!)

Provides shortcuts for common tasks involving OCaml projects, e.g.:

• installing a project as a library
• writing the same list of dependencies to .merlin, _tags, and META
• running _test.ml files

Installing

You can install using OPAM:

opam pin add .

This will ensure you have all the required dependencies.

Alternatively you can just copy or link car to somewhere on your $PATH.

Usage

You're expected to have a directory structure like this:

project/
  car
  car.toml
  src/
    main.ml
    some_module.ml
    some_module_test.ml
    ...

To create an initial car.toml file you can run ./car init. You can also install car to somewhere on $PATH and do car instead of ./car, although then you won't be able to make customizations per-project.

Help text

This is the standard helptext which should give a brief description of the functions of car.

Usage car [rule]*
A collection of aliases for common tasks on OCaml projects using ocamlbuild.

init    Create an initial _car file.
gen     Generate a META file and dependency lists in .merlin, and _tags.
reqs    Print a list of the required packages listed in the config.
clean   Delete binaries created by other commands.
byte    Build main.d.byte from src/main.ml.
opt     Build main.native from main.ml.
top     Build a toplevel.
topgen  Splice support code for a toplevel in .ocamlinit and _top.ml.
doc     Build project documentation.
lib     Install project modules as an ocamlfind package.
unlib   Delete the ocamlfind package created by lib.
test    Run test files.
run     Run main or a specified file.

If you don't supply a rule, all rules will run but: gen, reqs, clean, topgen, lib, unlib, run.

Building a toplevel

If you want to build a toplevel using car top, running car topgen will splice support code in the following files (paths relative to the root of the project):

In .ocamlinit:

#thread
#directory "src/_build"

In src/project_top.ml (replace project with the name of your project):

let () = UTop_main.main ()

project_top.ml file is ignored when building your project as a library.

After running car topgen, you can run car top to build your own custom toplevel using UTop (car will add the UTop package to the build flags, so you don't need it in your requires directive). You can run it with ./project.top (where project is your project's name).