DH_OCAMLINIT(1)

📦
version 3.8 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 dh_ocamlinit — the manual page, but make it bestie 💖

okay so this is dh_ocamlinit, a lil Perl script from the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the universe, and she's here to do one thing and one thing only: swap out ocaml variables in your debian/*.in files for their actual values. that's it. that's the job. and she does it flawlessly. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

dh_ocamlinit — she substitutes ocaml variables in debian/*.in files with their corresponding value. like a glow-up but for text files. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dh_ocamlinit [debhelper options]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

bestie. listen. dh_ocamlinit goes looking through your debian/*.in files and replaces every single variable she finds with the value that actually corresponds to it. the examples the page gives us are @OCAML_ABI@, @OCamlStdlibDir@ and @OCamlDllDir@ — iconic trio, no notes. 🔥

but wait, there's more, and it's the fun part. ✨ the lines in those debian/*.in files get filtered by their prefix, and the rules are:

  • lines prefixed with OPT — only kept when ocaml compilation to native code is supported 👑
  • lines prefixed with BYTE — only kept when compilation to native code is not supported 🫶
  • lines prefixed with DYN — kept when dynamic linking is supported 🌈

and if that's not enough substitution for you (greedy, love that for you), dh_ocamlinit also handles additional substitutions — you just specify them in the OCAMLINIT_SED environment variable. yep. env var. she reads it. she respects it. 💜

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -d — clean up the files that were generated from the debian/*.in files that are present, and then exit. 🧹
okay so real talk: -d is deprecated. the manpage literally says it. do not use it. use dh_ocamlclean instead, she's the upgraded version and she ate. 💀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

this program is meant to be used together with debhelper. they're a package deal. a duo. a duo that slays. 🫶

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Mehdi Dogguy <mehdi@debian.org> — thank you for your service, king 👑

and that's the whole page bestie, no cap, we didn't skip a single line 💖

this was dh_ocamlinit from the User Contributed Perl Documentation, written against perl v5.40.1 and dated 2026-08-05. go forth and substitute. 🌸✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from