The Diskuv OCaml distribution is an open-source set of software that supports
software development in pure OCaml. The distribution's strengths are its:
✓ full compatibility with OCaml standards like Opam, Dune and ocamlfind
✓ laser focus on "native" development (desktop software, mobile apps and
embedded software) through support for the standard native compilers like
Visual Studio and Xcode
✓ ease-of-use through simplified installers and simple productivity commands;
high school students should be able to use it
✓ security through reproducibility, versioning and from-source builds
The installation will take approximately 1.5 HOURS on a modern Windows PC.
This version does not currently work if you have a space in your username
(ex. C:\Users\Jane Smith).
Installing this package will automatically install the required prerequisites
for Windows development:
* Visual Studio Build Tools 2019 (it will not touch any existing Visual Studio
installation)
* Git for Windows (if and only if your machine does not have it installed)
These alternatives may be better depending on your use case:
* Developing in a Javascript first environment? Have a look at Esy and Reason
* Developing operating system kernels? Have a look at Mirage OS
* Developing Linux server software like web servers? Plain old OCaml on
Debian, etc. works well
* Writing compilers or proofs? Plain old OCaml works really well
* Wanting quick installations? Use anything but Diskuv OCaml! Diskuv OCaml
will conduct from-source builds unless it can guarantee (and code sign) the
binaries are reproducible. Today that means a lot of compiling.
Commercial tools and support are available from Diskuv for mixed OCaml/C
development; however, this pure OCaml winget package only has limited support
for mixed OCaml/C. For example, the "ctypes" opam package has been patched
to work with Visual Studio but is out-dated. Contact
support AT diskuv.com if you need OCaml/C development.