install-ocaml

Installing OCaml

This file contains minimal instructions to setup a local installation of OCaml un Linux. See here for detailed instructions here.

First, install opam, the OCaml official package manager:

sudo apt install opam

Then, you must initialize opam. This installs OCaml and creates a default switch:

opam init --bare -a -y

Here we assume you will work on the default switch. To check that a switch actually exists:

opam switch list

In the unlikely case the previous command shows an empty list, you must manually create a switch:

opam switch create lip ocaml-base-compiler.4.14.0

This creates a switch for the LIP course with the given version of the OCaml compiler.

The following command updates environment variables, to make OCaml commands available on the current switch:

eval $(opam env)

Finally, install a few extra OCaml packages:

opam install -y dune merlin ocaml-lsp-server odoc ocamlformat utop menhir ppx_inline_test

In particular, this installation includes:

• dune, a build system for OCaml projects, similar to make;
• utop, a REPL interface for OCaml;
• Menhir, a parser generator;
• ppx_inline_test, a tool for writing in-line tests in OCaml.

We will use these tools for all the projects of the LIP course.