Hello all,
Learn-OCaml 1.0 is finally out 
Learn-OCaml is a web platform for exercises in OCaml programming, with automated grading that was originally developped for the OCaml MOOC. The interface features a code editor and client-side evaluation and grading ; it can be served statically, but if running the bundled server there are also server-side saves, facilities for teachers to follow the progress of students, give assignments, get grades, etc.
Get me there!
There is a live demo at ocaml-sf.org.
Although most changes will be mostly meaningful for teachers running their instances, this already shows the growing corpus of exercises.
To run your own instance, see the guide.
What’s new
This first major release, along with a lot of quality-of-life improvements, features a significant rewrite of the evaluation engine. The main visible consequences are:
- a nice speedup to the grading of exercises in the browser
- a huge (x100) speedup to the pre-processing of the exercises (when running
learn-ocaml build) - exercise solutions can no longer leak (the server only provides the already compiled jsoo version to the client), making the platform more suitable for evaluations
- error messages when compiling exercises are much, much better
A few other most-wanted features have also been added, like a reworked exercise choice page, and the ability to update a running instance with minimal downtime (learn-ocaml build serve --replace) ; as well as lots of QoL improvements, like bugfixes and integrated documentation in the teacher interface.
What’s coming
A proper login system with choice between email/password or a Moodle server is in the works ; we expect it to land shortly in 1.1, once we work on the remaining rough edges.
Porting to more recent versions of OCaml is also planned.
Feedback
Feedback is very welcome here or on Github.
— Louis Gesbert (OCamlPro), on behalf of the Learn-OCaml team
With thanks to the OCaml Foundation for funding the major part of this work.