ocaml / ocaml/dune

Support putting all tooling binaries into shell environment

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dev tools package management
Dominant language
OCaml
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

As per tool management requirements 2.2. Shells, 2.3. Programmatic use, 3.2.2.1. Usable as tools, and 3.2.3.1. Usable as tools, it should be possible to put all tools managed by dune in the executable lookup path for a user.

IMO, this would ideally be via a single directory of links to binaries, which could them be added as, e.g., PATH=_build/tools/bin:$PATH. This follows a common convention across package and project management tooling, avoids cluttering the path, and avoids the problem of stale PATH entries that comes from adding a path for each installed binary individually. It does require a mechanism to keep the bin directory in sync, but I would expect this to be relatively straight forward to address via a bimap.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the tool-management requirements in doc/dev/tools-design/requirements.md, especially sections 2.2, 2.3, 3.2.2.1, and 3.2.3.1. Trace how Dune manages tools and determine how a shared executable directory could stay synchronized; done means users can add that directory to PATH and access all managed tool binaries.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ocaml
Domain
build-system, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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