OCaml: Reference to undefined global `A` - ocaml

Question

I have a three signatures A.mli,B.mli,and C.mli. Within them I have submodules Aa, Bb, and Cc respectively and also a signature for the implementations Ai, Bi, and Ci.
I have implemented them in a file called D.ml which looks like this
open A
open B
open C
module Ai : Aa = struct ... end
module Bi : Bb = struct ... end
module Ci : Cc = struct ... end
I compile them each in turn with the following commands:
ocamlfind ocamlc -linkpkg -thread -package core A.mli
ocamlfind ocamlc -linkpkg -thread -package core B.mli
ocamlfind ocamlc -linkpkg -thread -package core C.mli
ocamlfind ocamlc -linkpkg -thread -package core D.ml
which all succeed.
I then have a file E.ml where I try to use the modules Ai, Bi, Ci.
open A
open B
open C
module M = Ai(Ci)
(* do something else *)
However when I try to compile E.ml I get the
Error: Error while linking E.cmo:
Reference to undefined global `A`
I think I have to somehow include D.ml in the compilation step but I'm unsure how to.

Answer 1

Using ocamlc or ocamlopt compiler directly (even with the help of ocamlfind) is not an easy task, and should be left only for those, who write OCaml tools and very sure in what they're doing. So, in short, just use ocamlbuild, that is the default way of compiling things in OCaml world. Since, you're using Core library it would be also a good idea to use corebuild instead of ocamlbuild. corebuild is shipped with core, and is actually a small wrapper around ocamlbuild, that adds core dependencies, as well as some handy flags. So, with corebuild you can compile just with:
corebuild E.native
Without corebuild, you can compile with
ocamlbuild -pkg core E.native
ocamlbuild will do all the work for you, i.e., find all dependencies, sort them in correct order, invoke proper tools, etc... You just need this one, command.
If you're still interested in how to compile your example project properly, then you can ask ocamlbuild about this. Use -classic-display option, that will show you all intermediate commands,
ocamlbuild -use-ocamlfind -classic-display -pkg core E.byte
Will show you all steps. (You may need to ocamlbuild -clean, so that you can see all the steps from the start).