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Release notes on the MS Windows ports of OCaml

There are no less than five ports of OCaml for MS Windows available:

  • a native Win32 port, built with the Microsoft development tools;

  • a native Win32 port, built with the 32-bit version of the gcc compiler from the mingw-w64 project, packaged in Cygwin (under the name mingw64-i686);

  • a native Win32 port, built with the 64-bit version of the gcc compiler from the mingw-w64 project, packaged in Cygwin (under the name mingw64-x86_64);

  • a port consisting of the Unix sources compiled under the Cygwin Unix-like environment for Windows;

  • a native Win64 port (64-bit Windows), built with the Microsoft development tools.

Here is a summary of the main differences between these ports:

Native MS

Native MinGW

Cygwin

64 bits?

Win32 or Win64

Win32 or Win64

Win32 only

Third-party software required

for base bytecode system

none

none

none

for ocamlc -custom

MSVC

Cygwin

Cygwin

for native-code generation

MSVC+MASM

Cygwin

Cygwin

Speed of bytecode interpreter

70%

100%

100%

Replay debugger

yes (**)

yes (**)

yes

The Unix library

partial

partial

full

The Threads library

yes

yes

yes

The Graphics library

yes

yes

no

Restrictions on generated executables?

none

none

yes (*)
(*)

Cygwin-generated .exe files refer to a DLL that is distributed under the GPL. Thus, these .exe files can only be distributed under a license that is compatible with the GPL. Executables generated by MSVC or by MinGW have no such restrictions.

(**)

The debugger is supported but the "replay" functions are not enabled. Other functions are available (step, goto, run…​).

The remainder of this document gives more information on each port.

Table of Contents

The native Win32 port built with Microsoft Windows SDK

REQUIREMENTS

This port runs under MS Windows 7 (32 and 64 bits), Vista, XP, and 2000.

The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, …​) runs without any additional tools.

The native-code compiler (ocamlopt) requires the Microsoft Windows SDK (item [1]) and the flexdll tool (item [2]).

Statically linking OCaml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom) also requires items [1] and [2].

INSTALLATION

The binary distribution is a self-installing executable archive. Just run it and it should install OCaml automatically.

THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE

[1]

Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. Can be downloaded for free from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx under the name "Microsoft Windows 7 SDK".

[2]

flexdll version 0.31 or later. Can be downloaded from http://alain.frisch.fr/flexdll.html

RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES

The command-line tools can be recompiled from the Unix source distribution (ocaml-X.YY.Z.tar.gz), which also contains the files modified for Windows.

You will need the following software components to perform the recompilation:

  • Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, or 7 (32 or 64 bits).

  • Items [1] and [2] from the list of recommended software above.

  • The Cygwin port of GNU tools, available from http://www.cygwin.com/ Install at least the following packages (and their dependencies): diffutils, dos2unix, gcc-core, make, ncurses.

First, you need to set up your cygwin environment for using the MS tools. The following assumes that you have installed [1], [2], and [3] in their default directories. If this is not the case, you will need to adjust the paths accordingly.

  1. Open a Windows Command Prompt and enter the following command:

    set PFPATH=C:\Program Files

  2. If you are compiling on the 64-bit version of Windows 7, enter the following instead:

    set PFPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)

  3. Then enter the following commands:

    cd "%PFPATH%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin"
set FLEXDLLDIR=%PFPATH%\flexdll
vcvars32
echo VCPATH="`cygpath -p '%Path%'`" >C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo LIB="%LIB%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo LIBPATH="%LIBPATH%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo INCLUDE="%INCLUDE%;%FLEXDLLDIR%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo FLPATH="`cygpath '%FLEXDLLDIR%'`" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo PATH="$VCPATH:$FLPATH:$PATH" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo export PATH LIB LIBPATH INCLUDE >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo export OCAMLBUILD_FIND=/usr/bin/find >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv

  4. Open a Cygwin shell and enter the following commands:

    tr -d '\r' </tmp/msenv >.msenv32
echo '. $HOME/.msenv32' >>.bashrc

Now, close the Command Prompt and the shell and you’re set up for using the MS tools under Cygwin.

To recompile OCaml, start a new Cygwin shell and change to the top-level directory of the OCaml distribution. Then, do

cp config/m-nt.h config/m.h
cp config/s-nt.h config/s.h
cp config/Makefile.msvc config/Makefile

Then, edit config/Makefile as needed, following the comments in this file. Normally, the only variable that need to be changed is

PREFIX      where to install everything

Finally, use make -f Makefile.nt to build the system, e.g.

make -f Makefile.nt world
make -f Makefile.nt bootstrap
make -f Makefile.nt opt
make -f Makefile.nt opt.opt
make -f Makefile.nt install

NOTES

  • The VC++ compiler does not implement "computed gotos", and therefore generates inefficient code for 'byterun/interp.c'. Consequently, the performance of bytecode programs is about 2/3 of that obtained under Unix/GCC or Cygwin or Mingw on similar hardware.

  • Libraries available in this port: num, str, threads, graphics, and large parts of unix.

  • The replay debugger is partially supported (no reverse execution).

CREDITS

The initial port of Caml Special Light (the ancestor of OCaml) to Windows NT was done by Kevin Gallo at Microsoft Research, who kindly contributed his changes to the OCaml project.

The native Win32 and Win64 ports built with Mingw

REQUIREMENTS

Those ports run under MS Windows Seven, Vista, XP, and 2000.

The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, …​) runs without any additional tools.

The native-code compiler (ocamlopt), as well as static linking of OCaml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom), require the Cygwin development tools, available at http://www.cygwin.com/ and the flexdll tool, available at http://alain.frisch.fr/flexdll.html You will need to install at least the following Cygwin packages for the 32-bit flavor (use the Setup tool from Cygwin):

mingw64-i686-binutils
mingw64-i686-gcc-core
mingw64-i686-runtime

and the following packages for the 64-bit:

mingw64-x86_64-binutils
mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core
mingw64-x86_64-runtime

NOTES

  • Do not use the Cygwin version of flexdll for this port.

  • There is another 32-bit gcc compiler, from the MinGW.org project, packaged in Cygwin under the name mingw-gcc. It is not currently supported by flexdll and OCaml.

  • The standard gcc compiler shipped with Cygwin used to support a -mno-cygwin option, which turned the compiler into a mingw compiler. This option was used by previous versions of flexdll and OCaml, but it is no longer available in recent version, hence the switch to another toolchain packaged in Cygwin.

  • The standalone mingw toolchain from the MinGW-w64 project (http://mingw-w64.org/) is not supported. Please use the version packaged in Cygwin instead.

INSTALLATION

The binary distribution is a self-installing executable archive. Just run it and it should install OCaml automatically.

RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES

You will need the following software components to perform the recompilation: - Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, or Seven. - Cygwin: http://cygwin.com/ Install at least the following packages (and their dependencies, as computed by Cygwin’s setup.exe):

  • For both flavor of OCaml (32-bit and 64-bit):

    diffutils
make
ncurses

  • For the 32 bit flavor of OCaml:

    mingw64-i686-binutils
mingw64-i686-gcc-core
mingw64-i686-runtime

  • For the 64 bit flavor of OCaml:

    mingw64-x86_64-binutils
mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core
mingw64-x86_64-runtime

    • The flexdll tool (see above). Do not forget to add the flexdll directory to your PATH

The standalone mingw toolchain from the MinGW-w64 project (http://mingw-w64.org/) is not supported. Please use the version packaged in Cygwin instead.

Start a new Cygwin shell and unpack the source distribution (ocaml-X.YY.Z.tar.gz) with tar xzf. Change to the top-level directory of the OCaml distribution. Then, do

cp config/m-nt.h config/m.h
cp config/s-nt.h config/s.h

For a 32 bit OCaml:

cp config/Makefile.mingw config/Makefile

For a 64 bit OCaml:

cp config/Makefile.mingw64 config/Makefile

Then, edit config/Makefile as needed, following the comments in this file. Normally, the only variable that need to be changed is

PREFIX      where to install everything

Finally, use make -f Makefile.nt to build the system, e.g.

make -f Makefile.nt world
make -f Makefile.nt bootstrap
make -f Makefile.nt opt
make -f Makefile.nt opt.opt
make -f Makefile.nt install

NOTES

The Cygwin port of OCaml

REQUIREMENTS

This port requires the Cygwin environment from Cygnus/RedHat, which is freely available at:

It also requires the flexdll tool, available at:

This port runs under all versions of MS Windows supported by Cygwin.

INSTALLATION

We do not distribute binaries for this port, but they can be found in the Cygwin distribution (use the Setup tool from Cygwin and select the OCaml packages). Alternatively, recompile from the source distribution.

RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES

Before starting, make sure that the gcc version installed by cygwin is not 4.5.3 (it has a bug that affects OCaml). If needed, use cygwin’s setup.exe to downgrade to 4.3.4.

You will need to recompile (and install) flexdll from source with Cygwin’s C compiler because the official binary version of flexdll doesn’t handle Cygwin’s symbolic links and sometimes fails to launch the C compiler.

In order to recompile flexdll, you first need to configure, compile, and install OCaml without flexdll support (configure with options -no-shared-libs), then modify the flexdll Makefile to change line 51 from:

LINKFLAGS = -ccopt "-link version_res.o"

to:

LINKFLAGS = -cclib version_res.o

Then make CHAINS=cygwin and add the flexdll directory to your PATH. Make sure to add it before '/usr/bin' or you will get cygwin’s flexlink.

Then, in OCaml’s source directory, type:

make clean
make distclean

and follow the instructions for Unix machines given in the file INSTALL.

NOTES

  • There is a problem with cygwin’s port of gcc version 4.5.3. You should use cygwin’s setup program to downgrade to 4.3.4 before compiling OCaml.

  • The replay debugger is fully supported.

  • When upgrading from 3.12.0 to 3.12.1, you will need to remove '/usr/local/bin/ocamlmktop.exe' before typing make install.

  • In order to use the "graph" library, you will need to use Cygwin’s setup.exe to install the xinit, and libX11-devel packages before compiling OCaml.

The native Win64 port built with Microsoft Windows SDK

REQUIREMENTS

This port runs under MS Windows XP 64, Windows Server 64, and Windows 7 64 on Intel64/AMD64 machines.

The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, …​) runs without any additional tools.

Statically linking OCaml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom) requires the Microsoft Platform SDK compiler (item [1] in the section "third-party software" below) and the flexdll tool (item [2]).

The native-code compiler (ocamlopt) requires the Microsoft compiler and the Microsoft assembler MASM64 (item (1() and the flexdll tool (item [2]).

INSTALLATION:

There is no binary distribution yet. Please compile from sources as described below.

THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE

[1]

Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. Can be downloaded for free from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx under the name "Microsoft Windows 7 SDK".

[2]

flexdll version 0.31 or later. Can be downloaded from http://alain.frisch.fr/flexdll.html

RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES

The command-line tools can be recompiled from the Unix source distribution ('ocaml-X.YZ.tar.gz'), which also contains the files modified for Windows.

You will need the following software components to perform the recompilation: - Windows XP 64, Windows Server 64, or Windows 7 64. - Items [1] and [2] from the list of recommended software above. - The Cygwin port of GNU tools, available from http://www.cygwin.com/ Install at least the following packages: diffutils, make, ncurses.

First, you need to set up your cygwin environment for using the MS tools. The following assumes that you have installed [1] and [2] in their default directories. If this is not the case, you will need to adjust the paths accordingly.

  1. Open a Windows Command Prompt and enter the following commands:

    set PFPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)
cd "%PFPATH%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin"
vcvars64
echo VCPATH="`cygpath -p '%Path%'`" >C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo LIB="%LIB%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo LIBPATH="%LIBPATH%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo INCLUDE="%INCLUDE%" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo FLPATH="`cygpath '%PFPATH%\flexdll'`" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo PATH="$VCPATH:$FLPATH:$PATH" >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo export PATH LIB LIBPATH INCLUDE >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv
echo export OCAMLBUILD_FIND=/usr/bin/find >>C:\cygwin\tmp\msenv

  2. Open a Cygwin shell and enter the following commands:

    tr -d '\r' </tmp/msenv >.msenv64
echo '. $HOME/.msenv64' >>.bashrc

Now, close the Command Prompt and the shell and you’re set up for using the MS tools under Cygwin.

To recompile OCaml, start a new Cygwin shell and change to the top-level directory of the OCaml distribution. Then, do

cp config/m-nt.h config/m.h
cp config/s-nt.h config/s.h
cp config/Makefile.msvc64 config/Makefile

Then, edit config/Makefile as needed, following the comments in this file. Normally, the only variable that need to be changed is

PREFIX      where to install everything

Finally, use make -f Makefile.nt to build the system, e.g.

make -f Makefile.nt world
make -f Makefile.nt bootstrap
make -f Makefile.nt opt
make -f Makefile.nt opt.opt
make -f Makefile.nt install

NOTES

  • Libraries available in this port: num, str, threads, graphics, and large parts of unix.

  • The replay debugger is partially supported (no reverse execution).

  • The graphical browser ocamlbrowser is not supported.