New kinds of build errors

This page describes build errors that are reported differently when ocamlbuild is used.

Circular build instead of unbound symbol

If you use the module name you are defining in its body, ocamlbuild will report a circular build error instead of an unbound symbol error. For example consider the following a.mli file:

type t
val x : A.t

If you compile with ocamlopt :

$ ocamlopt a.mli
File "a.mli", line 3, characters 8-11:
Unbound type constructor A.t

If you use ocamlbuild:

$ ocamlbuild a.cmi
Circular build detected (a.cmi already seen in [ a.cmi ])
Compilation unsuccessful after building 1 target (1 cached) in 00:00:00.

Module case naming errors

Let mm.mli be:

type t

and a.mli be:

val x : MM.t

If you compile with ocamlopt:

$ ocamlopt mm.mli
$ ocamlopt a.mli 
Wrong file naming: mM.cmi contains the compiled interface for Mm

If you use ocamlbuild:

$ ocamlbuild a.cmi
+ /usr/local/bin/ocamlc.opt -c -o a.cmi a.mli
File "a.mli", line 1, characters 8-12:
Unbound type constructor MM.t
Command exited with code 2.
Compilation unsuccessful after building 2 targets (0 cached) in 00:00:00.