Sounds very relatable coming from c++. Managing dependencies is generally not too fun, it's very easy to waste a whole day (or more) fighting with the build system/package manager/linker. I like to think it's the tools but then you see a really smart c++ developer and that excuse starts to sound a little weak. It seems c and c++ attract a relatively high average percentage of developers who are willing to go learn the ins and outs of build systems and how compilers and libraries all interact.

I'm curious about the happy path of ocaml vs c++, I'm not sure how much of a happy path there even is in c++. I guess if every dependency uses the same build system as the main project, maybe that's a happy path? Hard to call cmake a happy path though, more so just a tolerable path. Conan sounds nice in theory but my experiences do not match the hopes I had. I remember golang dependencies not being too bad when I tried it, really need to mess around with rust a bit to see what that's like too since I hear so much good about it.