Quickstart OCaml
Want to get up and running with OCaml as fast as possible? Here’s how.
Try OCaml
You can try OCaml directly in your browser, no installation required!
Quick introductions
The following articles provide quick introductions to the OCaml language. You can run many of the examples in your browser using TryOCaml.
- Learn X in Y minutes where X = OCaml. It provides a quick introduction to key OCaml concepts.
- A First Hour with OCaml: a quick tour of the OCaml language
- OCaml cheat sheet: a detailed cheat sheet covering language basics such as functions, records, and variants, to more advanced topics like functors, first-class modules, and locally abstract types.
- Operator lookup: Fun and easy way to look up OCaml’s operators and find out what they do.
Setting up a development environment
Eventually, you will need to set up a local development environment.
Building projects with Dune
Dune is a build system for OCaml projects.
- Quickstart an OCaml project with Dune
- Dune’s own quick start guide provides another introduction to Dune
- Dune’s official docs contain much more info
Example projects
- Dune’s hello world project example
- A sample Dune project on GitHub. Great for starting out your own project – has all the files you need.
- Project showing how to use Dune for different package types
Package management with Opam
Opam is a package manager for OCaml.
You can search for OCaml packages through the OCaml Package search, which includes comprehensive information about OCaml packages and documentation, and through the Opam website packages list.