I realized that I forgot to remove a reference to Stdlib__functor in applicative.ml from when I was troubleshooting, and I think that leaving it may have messed up the build and caused the errors. However, I’m not sure.
I recloned OCaml and moved my changes over. I read @gasche’s advice, but found that in order to get the libraries to build, I actually needed to do make name.cmi and make name.cmx, as opposed to make stdlib__name.cmi. Now, I got the standard library compiled again.
Now, when I run make world.opt, there is an error that required module Applicative is unavailable when the .cmo files of ocaml/ocamldoc, and when I ran make clean in its directory, ocaml/debugger before it, are linked. I assume that the same error would occur for directories that have not been reached yet. I noticed that the standard library is linked via -I ../stdlib in the compile command; is Applicative supposed to be defined by searching that directory?
Should I post the git diff or my updated files somewhere?
Update: I realized that I may have forgotten to update otherlibs/threads/Makefile when I transferred my changes, but when I went to check, I couldn’t find my ocaml directory - I checked my bash history and I didn’t delete it, so I’m a little confused about what I messed up. Luckily, my changes are based on a personal utility library, so all I lost are the boilerplate changes (e.g. adding to stdlib.ml(i)). Perhaps it’s better for me to start from scratch with my new knowledge anyway. I will redo my changes and inform you of the result.