Trying to build ocaml "ocamltest no found"

Learning
1

Hi, new to ocaml here, trying to install a newer version on Ubuntu 18 as a needed dependency.

I downloaded the 4.12.0 version from here Releases – OCaml and followed the INSTALL.adoc
steps.

./configure
make
make tests

make step complained about module Pervasives not found (which I can see at /usr/lib/ocaml/) so probably that’s fine. But the make tests step return immediately with this error:

ocaml-4.12.0> make tests
make -C testsuite all
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/david/Downloads/ocaml-4.12.0/testsuite'
Makefile:122: *** ocamltest not found in ../ocamltest.  Stop.
Makefile:116: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/david/Downloads/ocaml-4.12.0/testsuite'
Makefile:569: recipe for target 'tests' failed
make: *** [tests] Error 2

What am I doing wrong?

2

It sounds like the real error is at the make step. What is the error message related to Pervasives?

3

I believe that ocamltest isn’t built by default on released versions. You should pass the --enable-ocamltest flag to configure when you want to run the tests from a release tarball.
(The Pervasives issue could also indicate another problem; if possible please show the exact message you got).

2 Likes
4

Unless you specifically need to compile from source for some reason, you should use opam to install OCaml. Follow the instructions at Up and Running with OCaml – OCaml

1 Like
5

opam needs internet access (I think), which I lack (air-gapped computer).

6

Thanks vlaviron, that was the answer to the missing ocamltest! The next question is where everything is installed after the naked ./configure && make.

After make, a ocaml binary resides in the current folder (ocaml-4.12.0), but running that results in:

ocaml-4.12.0> ./ocaml --version
-bash: ./ocaml: /usr/local/bin/ocamlrun: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
7

opam should not need internet access.

I’m lacking a good howto to point to you and the following is very hand-wavy.

But basically you can do a local repo (maybe clone the official repo) and then cache the tarballs via opam admin cache and copy that to your air gapped machine. Then make opam use that local repo for your switches.

1 Like
8

Nothing gets installed until you run make install.
By default everything gets installed under the /usr/local prefix. If you need to install in another location (for example if you don’t have write access to /usr/local), you can add --prefix /my/installation/dir/ to the configure flags (you need to recompile everything whenever you change the prefix though).

There are some decent installations instructions in the INSTALL.adoc file that should be included in the release (they look a bit outdated but still more or less correct).

1 Like