The ocamldep command scans a set of OCaml source files (.ml and .mli files) for references to external compilation units, and outputs dependency lines in a format suitable for the make utility. This ensures that make will compile the source files in the correct order, and recompile those files that need to when a source file is modified.
The typical usage is:
ocamldep options *.mli *.ml > .depend
where *.mli *.ml expands to all source files in the current directory and .depend is the file that should contain the dependencies. (See below for a typical Makefile.)
Dependencies are generated both for compiling with the bytecode compiler ocamlc and with the native-code compiler ocamlopt.
The ocamlbuild compilation manager (see chapter 18) provide a higher-level, more automated alternative to the combination of make and ocamldep.
The following command-line options are recognized by ocamldep.
filename: Module1 Module2 ... ModuleNwhere Module1, …, ModuleN are the names of the compilation units referenced within the file filename, but these names are not resolved to source file names. Such raw dependencies cannot be used by make, but can be post-processed by other tools such as Omake.
Here is a template Makefile for a OCaml program.
OCAMLC=ocamlc OCAMLOPT=ocamlopt OCAMLDEP=ocamldep INCLUDES= # all relevant -I options here OCAMLFLAGS=$(INCLUDES) # add other options for ocamlc here OCAMLOPTFLAGS=$(INCLUDES) # add other options for ocamlopt here # prog1 should be compiled to bytecode, and is composed of three # units: mod1, mod2 and mod3. # The list of object files for prog1 PROG1_OBJS=mod1.cmo mod2.cmo mod3.cmo prog1: $(PROG1_OBJS) $(OCAMLC) -o prog1 $(OCAMLFLAGS) $(PROG1_OBJS) # prog2 should be compiled to native-code, and is composed of two # units: mod4 and mod5. # The list of object files for prog2 PROG2_OBJS=mod4.cmx mod5.cmx prog2: $(PROG2_OBJS) $(OCAMLOPT) -o prog2 $(OCAMLFLAGS) $(PROG2_OBJS) # Common rules .SUFFIXES: .ml .mli .cmo .cmi .cmx .ml.cmo: $(OCAMLC) $(OCAMLFLAGS) -c $< .mli.cmi: $(OCAMLC) $(OCAMLFLAGS) -c $< .ml.cmx: $(OCAMLOPT) $(OCAMLOPTFLAGS) -c $< # Clean up clean: rm -f prog1 prog2 rm -f *.cm[iox] # Dependencies depend: $(OCAMLDEP) $(INCLUDES) *.mli *.ml > .depend include .depend