mac os zarith problem

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1

I am using macos monterey 12.6 on a mac mini m1. I use the ocaml language quite a bit on linux mint, and was trying to get it working on the m1.

My programs (from linux) use package zarith (which is a multiple precision package). brew only allows an install of ocaml-zarith, not zarith. I installed opam with brew, and tried

opam install zarith

which gives the error:

#=== ERROR while compiling zarith.1.12 ========================================#

context 2.1.3 | macos/arm64 | ocaml.4.14.0 | https://opam.ocaml.org#efe0e534
path ~/.opam/default/.opam-switch/build/zarith.1.12
command ~/.opam/opam-init/hooks/sandbox.sh build make
exit-code 2
env-file ~/.opam/log/zarith-52113-b5f72c.env
output-file ~/.opam/log/zarith-52113-b5f72c.out
output
project.mak:150: depend: No such file or directory
(echo “let”; grep “version” META | head -1) > zarith_version.ml
ocamldep -native zarith_version.ml z.ml q.ml big_int_Z.ml z.mli q.mli big_int_Z.mli > depend
File “zarith_version.ml”, line 2, characters 0-1:
2 | version = “1.12”
^
Error: Illegal character (\027)
make: *** [depend] Error 2

===================================================================

The command

opam list

does not show ocaml-zarith as a package, and it is not found when I try

ocamlfind ocamlopt -o rho_z -linkpkg -package ocaml-zarith rho_z.ml

and zarith is not found trying

ocamlfind ocamlopt -o rho_z -linkpkg -package zarith rho_z.ml (note: this works on linux if zarith is installed)

So I am not clear how to use ocaml-zarith for zarith, since I cannot install zarith with opam.

2

Looks like grep on your system prepends the output with line numbers (that 2) by default and that’s tripping it up.

2 Likes
3

Interesting. I have a very similar system (Monterey 12.6, grep version grep (BSD grep, GNU compatible) 2.6.0-FreeBSD) and zarith installed fine for me. I suspect the OP aliased grep to another command.

4

That is strange indeed as the alias command is usually not respected in shell scripts, so OP must’ve shadowed grep in the PATH.

5

The problem is that the following are set:

export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=always'
export GREP_COLOR='1;35;40'

If I

export GREP_OPTIONS=‘–color=never’

an run

opam import zarith

the import is ok and my ocaml programs run with zarith

6

Still odd - those are GNU grep options, not the BSD grep which is normally first in the PATH on MacOS.

–
Ian

1 Like
7

Mine says it’s ‘GNU compatible’, maybe it does that.