Why does ocamldoc fail on unbound modules?

Question

Here is an example interface `test.mli`, commented with ocamldoc-style comments: ``` (** ocamldoc module comment *) open MissingModule;; (** ocamldoc function comment *) val test : unit;; ``` If I run the command `ocamldoc test.mli`, I get the following error: ``` File "test.mli", line 2, characters 0-9: Error: Unbound module MissingModule 1 error(s) encountered ``` Why should a documentation generator care about unbound modules?

Accepted Answer

That's because `ocamldoc` fully qualifies type names. The file:

```
open MissingModule

val f: foo -> unit
```

is translated to

```
val f: MissingModule.foo -> unit
```

And `MissingModule.foo` becomes a nice cross-reference to the definition of `foo` in `MissingModule` (if `missingModule.mli` is given as argument to `ocamldoc`).

And to complete the answer, in order to fully qualify type idents, you need to type the file you are processing. So `ocamldoc` needs to be able to access to the corresponding `.cmi` files.

Why does ocamldoc fail on unbound modules?

Solution

Problem