Using OCaml compiler from external drive

Ecosystem
1

I have a machine with limited space. I have an external ssd so I can work with OCaml/ReasonML native compilation projects.

How would I use opam/ocaml from this disk so it doesnt eat up my primary limited hard drive space?

Thank you.

2

On Linux and macOS you can mount the drive to your .opam.

If it’s a subfolder of your drive you can use mount --bind

2 Likes
3

You can also set the OPAMROOT variable to something that points to your SSD. It will be used as the “opam root” instead of $HOME/.opam.

3 Likes
4

Very helpful gentleman. Thank you.

For the record, these are the commands I have run to get my opam and esy setup on the external ssd.

~/Downloads
 [I] ➜ set -xg ESY__PREFIX /Volumes/external/.esy
~/Downloads
 [I] ➜ echo $ESY__PREFIX
/Volumes/external/.esy

~/Downloads
 [I] ➜set -xg OPAMROOT /Volumes/external/.opam
~/Downloads took 2m 52s 87ms
 [I] ➜ echo $OPAMROOT
/Volumes/external/.opam

Then run opam init per instructions.

Running esy in projects is using the external ssd %EXTERNAL/.esy for caching. Opam is use .opam in same.

Thanks again.

3 Likes