Many existing OCaml libraries, applications and the compiler itself do not produce or install the annotation files (.annot, .cmt, .cmti, .spot, .spit) which are essential for sub-expression type queries (caml-types.el), definition seaches and code refactoring (TypeRex and OCamlSpotter). If you want to use development tools, you have to:

• Rebuild all the software from the source, adding -annot/-bin-annot option to compiler flags in build scripts i.e. Makefile/OCamlBuild/OMakefile.

• Install those annotation files together with the library objects and signatures. (Require modification of the build scripts)

for all the programs.

SpotInstall provides a post-installation workaround, consists of two things:

• A very small compiler patch which activates -annot and -bin-annot if OCAML_ANNOT environment variable is defined. (You no longder need to add -annot/-bin-annot to the build scripts.)
• A small tool to install annotation files to the library destination directory. (You no longer need to add annotation file installation to the build scripts.)

For the first workaround, you need a small patch available from::

hg clone -b annot https://bitbucket.org/camlspotter/mutated_ocaml

or included in this source package, ocaml-annot-.patch.

For the second one, you can use SpotInstall. This tool.