ocaml/dune

Detect common typos in metadata and attempt to guess user's intention (or at least print a hint)

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#11,561 opened on Mar 24, 2025

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 (12 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)OCaml (478 forks)github user discovery
good first issue

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Description

In dune-project there are many opportunities for typos that are technically correct but don't express the user's intention. Two examples:

(package
 (name foo)
 (depends
  (bar (= version))   ; should be :version
  (baz :with_test)))) ; should be :with-test

Desired Behavior

If a dune project has obvious typos it would be helpful if dune could detect this and print a warning with a suggestion of what the correct value should be.

Additionally, dune could promote the suggested changes into dune-project, or even assume the correct version and print a warning. In these two cases we should allow the user to override this behaviour just in case it's not a typo and they really want the version of their project to be "version".

Contributor guide

Research direction
Investigate the dune project AST parsing and identify where field values are checked. Look for patterns where a string like 'version' is used in a position expecting a keyword. Add warning logic and possibly an auto fix suggestion. Test with examples from the issue.
Tech stack
None
Domain
developer experiencetooling
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
3-5 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
OCaml
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
65