A performance-focussed version of OCaml. This is also the home of the Flambda 2 optimiser and the Cfg backend.
OxCaml is currently based on OCaml 5.2.0 (plus some patches from later upstream revisions, mainly in the runtime). It supports both the OCaml 4 and OCaml 5 runtime systems, although support for the OCaml 4 runtime is expected to be removed in autumn 2025.
The following gives basic instructions for getting set up. Please see
HACKING.md for more detailed instructions if you want to develop in this repo.
That file also contains instructions for installing the OxCaml compiler in a way
that it can be used to build OPAM packages.
The supported platforms are x86-64 and arm64 Linux; and arm64 macOS. x86 macOS may still work.
One-time setup (you can also use other 4.14.x releases):
$ opam switch 4.14.1 # or "opam switch create 4.14.1" if you haven't got that switch already
$ eval $(opam env)
$ opam install dune.3.15.2 menhir.20231231
You probably then want to fork the oxcaml/oxcaml repo to your own Github org.
Use normal commands to make a branch from the desired upstream branch (typically main), e.g.:
$ git clone https://github.com/oxcaml/oxcaml
$ cd oxcaml
$ git checkout -b myfeature origin/main
The OxCaml tree has to be configured before building. The configure script is not checked
in; you have to run autoconf. For example:
$ autoconf
$ ./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/dir --enable-runtime5
To build and install OxCaml, which produces a compiler installation directory whose layout is compatible with upstream, run:
$ make install
