aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/dev/doc/build-system.dune.md
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorThéo Zimmermann2018-09-05 13:04:00 +0200
committerThéo Zimmermann2018-09-05 13:04:00 +0200
commit579f30a53809f9cf73aa3d7c69960b50fc51c7fc (patch)
treeda69bfd576092da56f66c04ae800db5ae0042c33 /dev/doc/build-system.dune.md
parentdc78205a55fe1825c8744d3acb7bb43e08d39c4e (diff)
parent920723ab4c1707c0a98c978cdd7742d47e58582f (diff)
Merge PR #6857: [build] Preliminary support for building with `dune`.
Diffstat (limited to 'dev/doc/build-system.dune.md')
-rw-r--r--dev/doc/build-system.dune.md92
1 files changed, 92 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/dev/doc/build-system.dune.md b/dev/doc/build-system.dune.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..0b3e414513
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dev/doc/build-system.dune.md
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+This file documents what a Coq developer needs to know about the
+Dune-based build system. If you want to enhance the build system
+itself (or are curious about its implementation details), see
+build-system.dev.txt, and in particular its initial HISTORY section.
+
+Dune
+====
+
+Coq can now be built using
+[Dune](https://github.com/ocaml/dune). Contrary to other systems,
+Dune, doesn't use a global`makefile` but local build files named
+`dune` that are later composed to form a global build.
+
+As a developer, Dune should take care of all OCaml-related build tasks
+including library management, merlin files, and link order. You are
+are not supposed to modify the `dune` files unless you are adding a
+new binary, library, or plugin.
+
+The current Dune setup also doesn't require a call to `configure`. The
+auto-generated configuration files are properly included in the
+dependency graph so it will be automatically generated by Dune with
+reasonable developer defaults. You can still override the defaults by
+manually calling `./configure`, but note that some configure options
+such as install paths are not used by Dune.
+
+Dune uses a separate directory `_build` to store build artifacts; it
+will generate an `.install` file so artifacts in the build can be
+properly installed by package managers.
+
+## Targets
+
+The default dune target is `dune build` (or `dune build @install`),
+which will scan all sources in the Coq tree and then build the whole
+project, creating an "install" overlay in `_build/install/default`.
+
+You can build some other target by doing `dune build $TARGET`.
+
+In order to build a single package, you can do `dune build
+$PACKAGE.install`. Dune also provides targets for documentation and
+testing, see below.
+
+## Compositionality, developer and release modes.
+
+By default [in "developer mode"], Dune will compose all the packages
+present in the tree and perform a global build. That means that for
+example you could drop the `ltac2` folder under `plugins` and get a
+build using `ltac2`, that will use the current Coq version.
+
+This is very useful to develop plugins and Coq libraries as your
+plugin will correctly track dependencies and rebuild incrementally as
+needed.
+
+However, it is not always desirable to go this way. For example, the
+current Coq source tree contains two packages [Coq and CoqIDE], and in
+the OPAM CoqIDE package we don't want to build CoqIDE against the
+local copy of Coq. For this purpose, Dune supports the `-p` option, so
+`dune build -p coqide` will build CoqIDE against the system-installed
+version of Coq libs.
+
+## Stanzas
+
+`dune` files contain the so-called "stanzas", that may declare:
+
+- libraries,
+- executables,
+- documentation, arbitrary blobs.
+
+The concrete options for each stanza can be seen in the Dune manual,
+but usually the default setup will work well with the current Coq
+sources. Note that declaring a library or an executable won't make it
+installed by default, for that, you need to provide a "public name".
+
+## Workspaces and Profiles
+
+Dune provides support for tree workspaces so the developer can set
+global options --- such as flags --- on all packages, or build Coq
+with different OPAM switches simultaneously [for example to test
+compatibility]; for more information, please refer to the Dune manual.
+
+## Documentation and test targets
+
+The documentation and test suite targets for Coq are still not
+implemented in Dune.
+
+## Planned and Advanced features
+
+Dune supports or will support extra functionality that may result very
+useful to Coq, some examples are:
+
+- Cross-compilation.
+- Automatic Generation of OPAM files.
+- Multi-directory libraries.