README
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Caution |
The developer team released OCaml 5.0.0 in December 2022. OCaml 5.x features a full rewrite of its runtime system for shared-memory parallel programming using domains and native support for concurrent programming using effect handlers. Owing to the large number of changes, especially to the garbage collector, OCaml 4.14 (the final release in the OCaml 4.x series, originally released in March 2022) remains supported for the time being. Maintainers of existing codebases are strongly encouraged to evaluate OCaml 5.x and to report any performance degradations on our issue tracker. |
Branch trunk |
Branch 5.5 |
Branch 5.4 |
Branch 5.3 |
Branch 4.14 |
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Overview
OCaml is a functional, statically-typed programming language from the ML family, offering a powerful module system extending that of Standard ML and a feature-rich, class-based object system.
OCaml comprises two compilers. One generates bytecode which is then interpreted by a C program. This compiler runs quickly, generates compact code with moderate memory requirements, and is portable to many 32 or 64 bit platforms. Performance of generated programs is quite good for a bytecoded implementation. This compiler can be used either as a standalone, batch-oriented compiler that produces standalone programs, or as an interactive REPL system.
The other compiler generates high-performance native code for a number of processors. Compilation takes longer and generates bigger code, but the generated programs deliver excellent performance, while retaining the moderate memory requirements of the bytecode compiler. The native-code compiler currently runs on the following platforms:
| Tier 1 (actively maintained) | Tier 2 (maintained when possible) | |
|---|---|---|
x86 64 bits |
Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD |
NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly, OmniOS (Solaris) |
ARM 64 bits |
Linux, macOS |
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD |
Power 64 bits |
Linux (little-endian, ABIv2) |
Linux (big-endian, ABIv2) |
RISC-V 64 bits |
Linux |
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IBM Z (s390x) |
Linux |
Other operating systems for the processors above have not been tested, but the compiler may work under other operating systems with little work.
❗ From OCaml 5.0 onwards, native compilation is available only on 64-bit systems. Native compilation on 32-bit systems is no longer available, nor are there plans to bring it back.
Copyright
All files marked "Copyright INRIA" in this distribution are Copyright © 1996-2023 Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) and distributed under the conditions stated in file LICENSE.
Installation
See the file INSTALL.adoc for installation instructions on machines running Unix, Linux, macOS, WSL and Cygwin. For native Microsoft Windows, see README.win32.adoc.
Documentation
The OCaml manual is distributed in HTML, PDF, and Emacs Info files. It is available at
Keeping in Touch with the Caml Community
There is an active and friendly discussion forum at
The OCaml mailing list is the longest-running forum for OCaml users. You can email it at
You can subscribe and access list archives via the Web interface at
There also exist other mailing lists, chat channels, and various other forums around the internet for getting in touch with the OCaml and ML family language community. These can be accessed at
In particular, the IRC channel #ocaml on Libera has a
long history and welcomes questions.