ocaml / ocaml/dune

Provide a replacement hint for "external-lib-deps --missing"

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build cli enhancement
Dominant language
OCaml
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

When a library is not found, dune suggest to run dune external-lib-deps --missing <targets>. The suggested command will print an approximation of the the list of all external libraries that are missing. This is useful as it avoids having to ping-ping between dune build and opam install to install the missing libraries one by one.

However, we could collect the library names from the various "library not found errors" and print a single hint with the list of libraries. This would still work in stages, but with less stages than when handling errors one by one. Overall, this should provide a similar feature to users but at a smaller maintenance cost for us.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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 by tracing how Dune handles library-not-found errors and the dune external-lib-deps --missing command. Determine where the separate errors can be collected, then verify that a single hint lists the missing libraries and still works incrementally without requiring one-by-one installation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ocaml
Domain
build-system, cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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