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ocaml-python: Using Python scripts from OCaml

This is a minimal skeleton demonstrating how to invoke Python scripts from OCaml, using Unix pipes for communication.

This is a lightweight solution that gets you started right away and gives you full control, but does not handle any details of communicating values between Python and OCaml for you. Depending on your use case, it may be more appropriate to use one of these libraries:

  • pyml provides Python bindings, allowing to run Python code right inside the OCaml process
  • lymp runs Python in a seperate process, but provides an API for excecuting python functions and converting values back and forth between OCaml and Python

Build & Run

Simply execute make test to build, install, and run. Or, if you prefer to do things step by step:

  1. make build to build the package
  2. make install to install the package using opam, OCaml's package manager
  3. ocaml-python to execute the OCaml binary

To uninstall, execute make uninstall.

Dependencies

At a minimum, the package requires:

  • OCaml, version 4.05.0 or newer
  • Python 3, to run the Python script
  • opam, OCaml's package manager
  • jbuilder, an OCaml build tool

Using Python 2 or an older OCaml version should be straightforward, but hasn't been tested.

Additionally, the following OCaml packages must be installed through opam:

  • ocamlfind, to locate the Python script at runtime
  • core, Jane Street's de facto standard library for OCaml

With opam installed, acquiring these packages is as easy as excecuting opam install ocamlfind core

OS

The package has been tested with Ubuntu and MacOS and should work on all Unix systems. Adding support for Windows should not be difficult. Pull request are welcomed.