Building an OCaml development system in 8 easy steps

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I recently built an OCaml development environment from scratch and thought the steps I went through maybe of use to others. The final environment consists of ocaml, opam. jbuilder, vim and merlin.

Requirements

  • Linux OS, this guide uses CentOS 7 but any modern Linux should be similar
  • Standard Linux development tools
  • curl / wget
  • vim and enhanced vim

Note: if you have root access the guide covers the installation of the various tools

Preperation

For Centos 7 install a basic OS and then the development tools, curl, wget and vim-enhanced using yum. As root

yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'
yum install curl wget
yum install vim-enhanced

Note that in many cases distros will already install these as part of the base install.

The rest of the steps are run as a normal user.

Building the bootstrap compiler

Create a suitable directory to build and install the bootstrap compiler

mkdir -p ~/ocaml/bootstrap
cd ~/ocaml/bootstrap

Get latest ocaml, unpack and install in the bootstrap directory. Check for the latest version of the compiler (4.05 in this case) on the ocaml release page.

wget https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-4.05/ocaml-4.05.0.tar.gz
tar xzf ocaml-4.05.0.tar.gz
cd ocaml-4.05.0
./configure -prefix $(cd ..; pwd)/install
make world.opt
make install
cd ..

Install OPAM in a suitable location

Start a new shell ready to build opam with the bootstrap compiler as well as creating a suitable directory to install the opam executable in

bash
export PATH=$PATH:~/ocaml/bootstrap/install/bin
mkdir ~/ocaml/tools

Build the required libraries

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glpk/glpk-4.63.tar.gz
tar xzf glpk-4.63.tar.gz
cd glpk-4.63
./configure --prefix=$(cd ..; pwd)/install --disable-shared --with-pic
make
make install
cd ..

Get the latest opam source (see opam releases for the current version) and prepare to build it (ignore any git repo errors)

wget https://github.com/ocaml/opam/releases/download/2.0.0-beta4/opam-full-2.0.0-beta4.tar.gz
tar xzf opam-full-2.0.0-beta4.tar.gz
cd opam-full-2.0.0-beta4
CPPFLAGS=-I$(cd ../install/include; pwd) LDFLAGS=-L$(cd ../install/lib;pwd) LIBS="-lm" ./configure --prefix=$(cd ~/ocaml/tools; pwd)  --with-mccs
make lib-ext

Fix library dependency paths. Edit src_ext/mccs/src/jbuild and apply the following patch:

--- opam-full-2.0.0-beta4/src_ext/mccs/src/jbuild       2017-08-18 13:56:14.000000000 +0100
+++ opam-full-2.0.0-beta4.hack/src_ext/mccs/src/jbuild  2017-10-10 20:27:21.816265589 +0100
@@ -15,8 +15,8 @@
					   mccscudf
					   mccs_stubs))
   (public_name       mccs)
-  (cxx_flags         (:standard -I .))
-  (c_library_flags   (:standard -lglpk -lstdc++)) ;; dynlink version
+  (cxx_flags         (:standard -I . -I_HOME_/ocaml/bootstrap/install/include))
+  (c_library_flags   (:standard -L_HOME_/ocaml/bootstrap/install/lib -lglpk -lstdc++ -lm)) ;; dynlink version
   ;; (no_dynlink) (c_library_flags   (:standard -lz -lltdl)) ;; static version
   ;; (library_flags     (-cclib -static-libgcc -cclib -Wl,-l:libstdc++.a,-l:libglpk.a))
   (wrapped           false)

Replace _HOME_ with the directory the ocaml directory is in (~ in this case). This is required as the build process does not properly integrate LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS. Now build and install opam

make
make install

Next, add ~/ocaml/tools/bin to your PATH in .bash_profile. For now add the directory to your path:

export PATH=$PATH:~/ocaml/tools/bin

Initialise OPAM and prepare for use:

rm -rf ~/.opam
opam init

Prepare to build the compiler with opam

Exit from the bootstrap sub-shell and either logoff and on again to get the environment or run following commands

export PATH=$PATH:~/ocaml/tools/bin
. ~/.opam/opam-init/init.sh

Build the compiler using opam

List the available compiler versions

opam switch list-available

Select a suitable version and install with:

opam switch 4.05.0
eval $(opam env)

Cleanup the bootstrap process

cleanup the bootstrap directory

rm -rf ocaml/bootstrap

Vim integration

if your a gnome terminal or putty user (or any other terminals that shows TERM as xterm but support 256 colours) add the following to ~/.bash_profile

if [ "$TERM" == "xterm" ]; then
      # No it isn't, it's gnome-terminal
      export TERM=xterm-256color
fi

add better colours

mkdir -p ~/.vim/colors
curl http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=13397 > ~/.vim/colors/wombat256.vim
curl http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=13400 > ~/.vim/colors/wombat256mod.vim
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rhysd/vim-color-spring-night/master/colors/spring-night.vim > ~/.vim/colors/sprint-night.vim

Install merlin, for a detailed description see the merlin wiki entry vim-from-scratch

opam install merlin

Edit ~/.vimrc and add

let g:opamshare = substitute(system('opam config var share'),'\n$','','''')
execute "set rtp+=" . g:opamshare . "/merlin/vim"

vim setting, season to taste

let maplocalleader="``"
syntax on
set shiftwidth=2
set expandtab
colorscheme wombat256
set autoindent

Install standard libraries and utop

This step depends on the libraries you are interested

opam install core utop

Next Steps

This completes the build process. See the jbuilder for a suitable build tool, the github entry includes a quick start guide that covers the basics

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