These links explain the extra files: https://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/filenames.html https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/the-compiler-frontend-... https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/the-compiler-backend-b...

The cmx data could be converted to ELF note sections, but the whole thing has to work on Windows as well, so I guess they didn't want to depend on ELF.

In most projects, you can add this to your Makefile and forget about it:

    .mli.cmi:
            ocamlfind ocamlc $(OCAMLFLAGS) $(OCAMLPACKAGES) \
                -c $< -o $@
    .ml.cmo:
            ocamlfind ocamlc $(OCAMLFLAGS) $(OCAMLPACKAGES) \
                -c $< -o $@
    .ml.cmx:
            ocamlfind ocamlopt $(OCAMLFLAGS) $(OCAMLPACKAGES) \
                -c $< -o $@

    clean:
            rm -f *.cmi *.cmo *.cmx *.cma *.cmxa