A performance-focused 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 t 7325 o 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.3.15.3 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