OCaml Getting started with OCaml

Remarks

Installation on Windows (native)

Premise

These instruction shows a procedure to install native OCaml binaries in Windows. If your operative system is Windows 10 (Insider Preview) build 14316 or later you can also install OCaml through Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. In this case, follow the instruction to install OCaml on Ubuntu.

Install OCaml and Opam

Download OCaml official distribution. It contains both OCaml compilers and Opam packet manager. Suppose you have installed the software in C:/OCaml . To be sure you've correcly installed OCaml open cmd.exe and type ocaml .

If you see the message 'ocaml' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file you need to add C:/OCaml/bin to your Path (Environment Variable).

Add OCaml binaries to path

in Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings (on the left) > Environment Variables and then select Path in System Variable tab, then Edit .

Add C:/OCaml/bin; to the list.

Install Cygwin

Without Cygwin you can't use Opam. In fact, if you try to open Opam typing opam in cmd.exe it shows a message: Fatal error: exception Unix.Unix_error(20, "create_process", "cygcheck") .

Download Cygwin and start the installer. Be sure to check the following packages:

• automake
• diffutils
• libreadline
• make
• m4
• mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core
• mingw64-x86_64-gmp
• mingw64-x86_64-openssl
• mingw64-x86_64-pkg-config
• mingw64-x86_64-sqlite3
• patch
• rlwrap
• unzip
• wget

Suppose you have installed the software in C:/cygwin (C:/cygwin64 for 64bit version). Open cmd and type wget (or one of the executable present in C:/cygwin/bin ) to check if you can use the Cygwin executables. If the executable won't open, add C:/cygwin/bin to your Path (Environment Variable).

Configure Opam

Open cmd.exe and type opam init to configure Opam.

Then install ocamlfind (part of the OCaml compiler) with

opam install ocamlfind
opam config env
 

Check if ocamlfind is installed typing it in cmd.exe .

The command opam config env is used to add opam 's executables directory to the enviroment path. If after logout you cannot reach ocamlfind anymore, you can manually add it adding to path the following line: C:/Users/<your user>/Documents/.opam/system/bin/ .

Installing packages

Packages are installed through Opam with the command opam install xyz where xyz is the name of the package.

Install UTop

Try running the command opam install utop . If you have no errors, then typing utop will open the executable.

If you see the message

[ERROR] The compilation of zed failed at "ocaml setup.ml -build".
 

you have to manually install the single packages. Try again typing:

opam install zed
opam install lambda-term
opam install utop
 

Both lambda-term and utop might not install. See Troubleshoot section.

Installing Core

You can install core package with opam install core . On Windows 64bit version (and 64bit Cygwin) you will see the following error:

[ERROR] core is not available because your system doesn't comply with os != "win32" & ocaml-version = "4.02.3".
 

Troubleshoot: cannot create regular file

If package with name xyz.10.1 fails to install (where xyz is the name of the package, and 10.1 its version) with the following message:

install: cannot create regular file '/cygdrive/c/Users/<your user>/Documents/.opam/system/bin/<something>': File exists
 

You have to go in this directory:

C:\Users\<your user>\Documents\.opam\repo\default\packages\<xyz>\<xyz.10.1>\files 
 

and delete the file xyz.10.1.install .

Troubleshoot: cannot load shared library

If you try to open some Opam's package (eg: utop ) and you see this error:

Fatal error: cannot load shared library dlllwt-unix_stubs
Reason: The specified module could not be found.
 

Run opam config env again and try to reopen the executable.

Installation or Setup

Installing OPAM

OPAM is a package manager for OCaml. It builds and manages compiler versions and OCaml libraries for you easily.

The easiest way to install OPAM on your operating system is to use a package manager for your system. e.g apt-get, yum or homebrew.

Mac OSX Installation Instructions

Update homebrew formulae and install OPAM.

brew update
brew install opam
 

Ubuntu Installation Instructions

add-apt-repository ppa:avsm/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install ocaml opam
 

Compiling from source

wget http://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-4.03/ocaml-4.03.0.tar.gz
tar xf ocaml-4.03.0.tar.gz
cd ocaml-4.03.0
./configure -prefix installation_path
make world.opt
make install
 

Initializing OPAM

Once you have OPAM installed, run opam init and follow the instructions.

Once done you should be able to run the OCaml interpreter from your shell.

$ ocaml
        OCaml version 4.03.0

#
 

Your first program in OCaml

Now that the OCaml distribution is available on your favorite operating system, we can create your first program in OCaml: the Hello World!

We have different ways to launch an OCaml program.

The REPL (toplevel)

You can execute your code interactively with the toplevel. With the OCaml toplevel, you can write and execute OCaml code, as a UNIX shell. Afterwards, the toplevel checks the type of your code immediately. So, you can quickly and easily test some parts of code without compilation and execution.

You can launch the toplevel with the ocaml command. Then, you can write an OCaml sentence ended by ;; which is evaluated immediately. The toplevel displays the type and the value of your expression just after:

# "Hello Worlds!";;
- : string = "Hello Worlds!"
 

It is also possible to launch the toplevel on your file. You can see this explanation about that.

To facilitate your input in the toplevel, you can use a tool like ledit or rlwrap which provides some features (like input history):

 $ ledit ocaml

 $ rlwrap ocaml
 

Compilation to the bytecode

We have two different compilers, one which compiles to bytecode and the other which compiles to native code. The first is the same as the bytecode of the Java's virtual machine. So, the bytecode is less efficient but more portable.

We have some extensions files used by the OCaml compilers:

extension	definition
.ml	The source code (as .c in C)
.mli	The interface (as .h in C)
.cmo	Source code compiled by ocamlc in bytecode
.cmi	Interface code compiled by ocamlc
.cmx and .o	Source code compiled by ocamlopt in native code
.cma	Library (bucket of some *.cmo ) in bytecode
.cmxa and .a	Library in native code
.cmxs	Library in native code (to load dynamicaly)

The bytecode compiler is ocamlc .

You have different common options:

• -c : to compile a source file without the linkage process (to produce an executable). So, the command ocaml -c foo.ml produces a .cmo file. Unlike C in which the header file does not need to be compiled, it's necessary in OCaml to compile the .mli file: ocaml -c foo.mli .

You need to compile the interface first. When you compile the source file afterwards, OCaml tries to check that the implementation matches the interface.

The .mli file is not a mandatory. If you compile a .ml file without a .mli file, OCaml will produce a .cmi file automatically.

• -o : to compile some .cmo files to an executable. For example: ocamlc -o program foo.cmo bar.cmo . These files need to be arranged by the dependencies for which the first file has no dependence.

• -I : to indicate an other directory where the compiler can find the necessary files for the compilation (like the interface or source code). It's the same than the -I from a C compiler.

We have many other options. You can see the manual for more information.

So, you can write the hello.ml now, and compile this file with ocamlc -o hello hello.ml to produce a bytecode program:

let () = print_endline "Hello World!"
 

The let () = ... is the first entry of your program (like the main in C). After, we use the function print_endline (provided by the standard library) with the argument "Hello World!" to print Hello Worlds with a newline in the standard output.

After the compilation, you have the .cmo file and the .cmi file automatically produced by the compiler and your program hello . You can open your program, and in the top of this file, you can see:

#!/usr/local/bin/ocamlrun
 

That means your program need the ocamlrun program (provided by the distribution) to execute the bytecode (like the JVM).

Compilation to the native code

We have an another compiler that produces native code. The compiler is: ocamlopt . However, the resultant executable can't work on most other architectures.

ocamlopt uses the same options as ocamlc so you can execute ocamlopt -o hello hello.ml . After, you can see a .cmx and a .o file.

Finally, from your bytecode/native code program, you can execute:

$ ./hello
Hello World!
$