The Caml Hump: Symbiosis

This is a meta build system. It is implemented as an ocamlbuild plugin. It checks out source code from repositories and starts builds of individual components. Because ocamlbuild doesn't support linking additional files, a lot of different code is collected in a single file. This includes a JSON parser for configuration files. Symbiosis tries to avoid the problem of collecting all source dependencies in one large tree, or alternatively installing dependencies on the system. The former makes it difficult to change dependent component versions. The latter makes it difficult to quickly test different build version complicates developer setup. Correctly configured, just call ocamlbuild with a target for the top most component to build. All the source should be appear in the working directory and build. Initially it can be complex to set up, but once done, it is rather easy to add new components with interesting dependencies.