Tools & Libraries

This is a list of some interesting software that can be used to develop in OCaml.

The Standard Distribution

Standard Tools

• ocamlopt, the native code compiler, currently supporting x86, amd64 and arm;
• ocamlc, the bytecode compiler, to run OCaml code even on platforms where native code compilation is not available;
• ocaml, the toplevel system, allows you to write OCaml code in the terminal and to use OCaml as a scripting language;
• ocamlrun, the bytecode interpreter;
• ocamllex and ocamlyacc, the lexer and parser generators;
• ocamldoc, a documentation generator from OCaml sources;
• camlp4, a powerful preprocessor to create OCaml syntax extensions;
• ocamlbuild, a portable replacement for make, with automated rules to build OCaml projects;

Standard Libraries

• The Unix library provides bindings for most Unix system calls;
• The Str library allows you to use regular expressions in OCaml programs;
• The Num library provides arbitrary precision rational arithmetic;
• The Threads library provides concurrency in OCaml programs;

Contributed Tools

• Menhir is a parser generator for OCaml. It is mostly compatible with ocamlyacc, with many enhancements.

Contributed Libraries

• LablGTK is a graphical toolkit for OCaml, based on GTK+. The latest version is based on GTK 2.0. A tutorial is also available. Youc can use the MLglade tool to generate LablGTK code from a Wysiwyg interface.
• Ocsigen is a Web framework for OCaml. Since version 2.0, you can write OCaml code both for client-side and server-side in the same source, and the cliend-side code is automatically translated to Javascript using the OCaml-to-Javascript compiler js_of_ocaml.
• Core and Batteries are two different projects to extend the standard library, providing all the functions you always wished for in the standard library.

You can find many other OCaml libraries and tools on GitHub and on OCamlForge. Many projects are also listed in the OCaml Hump