First beta release of OCaml 5.1.0

Ecosystem
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After two alpha releases, the release of OCaml 5.1.0 is drawing near.

We have thus released a first beta version of OCaml 5.1.0 to help you update your softwares and libraries ahead of the release (see below for the installation instructions).

Compared to the last alpha release, this beta contains two subtle internal runtime fixes, and one Windows fix. Overall, the opam ecosystem looks in a good shape for the first beta release.

If you find any bugs, please report them on OCaml’s issue tracker.

Nearly all core development tools supports OCaml 5.1.0, and you can follow the last remaining wrinkles on the opam readiness for 5.1.0 meta-issue.

Currently, the release is planned for the end of July or the beginning of August.

If you are interested in full list of features and bug fixes of the new OCaml version, the
updated change log for OCaml 5.1.0 is available on GitHub.

Installation Instructions

The base compiler can be installed as an opam switch with the following commands
on opam 2.1:

opam update
opam switch create 5.1.0~beta1

The source code for the alpha is also available at these addresses:

Fine-Tuned Compiler Configuration

If you want to tweak the configuration of the compiler, you can switch to the option variant with:

opam update
opam switch create <switch_name> ocaml-variants.5.1.0~beta1+options <option_list>

where option_list is a space-separated list of ocaml-option-* packages. For instance, for a flambda and no-flat-float-array switch:

opam switch create 5.1.0~beta1+flambda+nffa ocaml-variants.5.1.0~beta1+options ocaml-option-flambda ocaml-option-no-flat-float-array

All available options can be listed with opam search ocaml-option.

Changes since the last alpha release:

Runtime System Bugfix

  • #12037: Fix some data races by using volatile when necessary
    (Fabrice Buoro and Olivier Nicole, review by Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni,
    Gabriel Scherer and Luc Maranget)
  • #12253, #12342: Fix infinite loop in signal handling.
    (Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni, report by Thomas Leonard, review by
    KC Sivaramakrishnan and Sadiq Jaffer)

Windows Bugfix

  • #12184, #12320: Sys.rename Windows fixes on directory corner cases.
    (Jan Midtgaard, review by Anil Madhavapeddy)
18 Likes
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After spending some time trying to map the current package build failures with the current beta release on the opam repository, I have written down a short topography of such build failures at Gagallium : Florian's OCaml compiler weekly, 5 July 2023 .

5 Likes