gnoff / rebel

Rebel

Build system that conforms to the ideal Reason build spec found here and here (summary below). Implemented with Jenga, Jane Street's all-purpose build system.

Features

• Lightning build speed: fast startup, incremental, parallel, etc.
• rebel to build everything. No need for sub-build commands since only changed things are rebuilt.
• Works with npm-style node_modules third-party dependencies that follows the spec (see next section).
• Works with OPAM/ocamlfind dependencies: put them in the rebel.ocamlfindDependencies field, like so.
• Works with Reason and vanilla OCaml syntax, out of the box.
• Generates JavaScript output through js_of_ocaml or bucklescript.
• Peace-of-mind "wipe the whole world" : just remove _build/.
• Share your work through the normal npm workflow: npm publish.

Coming soon:

• Integrated BetterErrors.
• Generates the correct .merlin files for Merlin, for editor assistance.
• Generates utop/rtop bootstrap file.
• Generates documentation based on mli/rei interface files.
• Easier installation: bundle Jenga, etc.

"Ideal Reason Project" Spec

• Needs a flat src/ directory.
• Third-party libraries go into node_modules/, flat list of all transitive dependencies.
• Third-party libraries names of the format foo-bar are transformed into FooBar when used as module name (source file names aren't allowed to have kebab-case).
• Every library (including the current one) needs a package.json that lists its npm dependencies in dependencies (as usual). OPAM/ocamlfind dependencies go into rebel.ocamlfindDependencies, same format as dependencies.
• Refer to your own files e.g. myFoo as the module MyFoo in other files in the current project.
• Refer to third-party files e.g. node_modules/bar/src/index.re as Bar.Index in the current project.

For Consumers

• npm install --save-dev reasonml/rebel
• Write some files in your src/, or install some spec compliant (see above) npm packages.
• ./node_modules/.bin/rebel. 🎉 🎉!
• Binary in _build/src/app.out

Rebel Config

• backend (string): One of "jsoo", "native", "bucklescript".
• targets ([string]): entry points for reason application. Currently only works with bucklescript.
• ocamlfindDependencies (array) : list of ocaml packages that work with ocamlfind

More Info

What to put in gitignore and npmignore when developing a jengaboot compliant project?

Jenga generates a .jenga directory that caches the build info. _build/ (where the artifacts live) cannot be easily shared yet (ocamlc's artifacts are sometimes laptop-specific). .merlin is auto-generated by the build.

In short, put .jenga, _build and .merlin in your .gitignore and .npmignore.

For Contributors

Ping me on IRC (chenglou), Twitter (@_chenglou), Gitter, etc. for specific details.

• git clone this repo
• npm install
• Modify logic in src
• To test examples run npm run rebel:bs or npm run rebel:re

Things to test

• Support for source/interface interface files that are (uncapitalized, Capitalized) and (snake_cased, camelCased). Support third-party library names of the latter pair (npm modules can no longer be capitalized).
• Compiles dangling unused source files and unused dependencies (for merlin editor integration, e.g. add a new dependency, compile, then start autocompleting that previously unused module).
• Dependencies that contain the same source file names.
• Third-party sources with unique names.
• Compiling A and B that both require C.
• .rei interface files referencing third-party modules that source files don't (extra dependencies).
• opening a third-party library to refer to its module that happens to have the same name as one of our first-party modules.
• Compile libraries with mixed re, rei, ml and mli files.
• Symlinks (relative and absolute).
• Third-party folders with kebab-case, snake_case, camelCase and CamelCase.
• Not compiling unused dependencies.

Credits

The whole Jane Street team for making Jenga and helping me understanding it. Also to the whole Reason team of course.