Tarides Blog • 16th October 2024

Dune Developer Preview: Installing The OCaml Compiler With Dune Package Management

We’re excited to share a significant update to Dune's Package Management system, particularly one that will be of great interest to OCaml developers. For those who have been exploring Dune’s experimental package management capabilities over the past six months, you’ll be pleased to know that we've recently merged a feature allowing OCaml compiler packages to be installed directly through Dune. Until now, Dune’s Package Management has supported the installation of various packages from the opam r...

Tarides Blog • 9th October 2024

Dune Package Management: Revolutionising OCaml Development

At Tarides, we’ve been working on an initiative to improve the OCaml development experience: Dune Package Management. As outlined in the Platform Roadmap, which was created through community collaboration, the aim is to unify all OCaml development workflows under a single, streamlined tool. After successfully completing a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) in Q1 2024, Dune will be the recommended tool for all OCaml development. The motivation behind Dune Package Management is c...

Tarides Blog • 3rd October 2024

Introducing the Dune Developer Preview: A New Era for OCaml Development

The Dune team is excited to announce the arrival of Dune Developer Preview, an experimental nightly release of Dune created to test improvements, including the new package management feature. This is a major milestone for OCaml development! We've been working hard improving Dune, and we're excited to introduce this new way to ease OCaml workflows. If you are an OCaml developer, this is the time to explore the future of package management and development yourself. Our prog...

Tarides Blog • 26th September 2024

Introducing Dune: The Essential Build System for OCaml Developers

One of the first tools you'll encounter when adopting OCaml is Dune, OCaml's official build system. Understanding what Dune is and how it serves you is key to crafting everything from a small project to maintaining large-scale codebases. So let's dive in! Learn how Dune makes development easier and serves as a gateway to the greater OCaml Platform. For a quick introduction to OCaml, check out the tutorials on OCaml.org. Dune is much more than a simple build tool. It automatically compiles your O...

Tarides Blog • 17th September 2024

Introducing the `odoc` Cheatsheet: Your Handy Guide to OCaml Documentation

For developers diving into the OCaml ecosystem, one of the essential tools you'll encounter is odoc. Whether you're a seasoned OCaml programmer or just starting out, understanding how to generate and navigate documentation efficiently is crucial. This is where odoc comes in, OCaml's official documentation generator. To make your experience with odoc even smoother, the odoc team has created the odoc Cheatsheet. odoc is a powerful documentation generator specifically designed for the OCaml program...

Tarides Blog • 5th September 2024

Easy Debugging for OCaml With LLDB

If you’re just getting started with OCaml, you may be wondering how to effectively debug your code when things go wrong. Fortunately, OCaml's ecosystem has evolved, offering modern tools that make debugging a more approachable task. Tarides engineer Tim McGilchrist recently wrote a blog post that explores how to debug OCaml programs using LLDB on macOS. Developers familiar with languages like C, C++, or Rust may already have experience using LLDB, as it is a common choice on Linux or FreeBSD. LL...

Tarides Blog • 24th July 2024

Creating the SyntaxDocumentation Command - Part 3: VSCode Platform Extension

(Uncredited co-author) In the final installment of our series on the SyntaxDocumentation command, we delve into its integration within the OCaml VSCode Platform extension. Building on our previous discussions about Merlin and OCaml LSP, this article explores how to make SyntaxDocumentation an opt-in feature in the popular VSCode editor. In the first part of this series, Creating the SyntaxDocumentation Command - Part 1: Merlin, we explored how to create a new command in Merlin, particularly the SyntaxDocumentation com...

Tarides Blog • 12th June 2024

Creating the SyntaxDocumentation Command - Part 2: OCaml LSP

(Uncredited co-author) In the first part of this series, Creating the SyntaxDocumentation Command - Part 1: Merlin, we explored how to create a new command in Merlin, particularly the SyntaxDocumentation command. In this continuation, we will be looking at the amazing OCaml LSP project and how we have integrated our SyntaxDocumentation command into it. OCaml LSP is a broad and complex project, so we will be limiting the scope of this article just to what's relevant for the SyntaxDocumentation command. The Language Ser...

Tarides Blog • 17th April 2024

Creating the SyntaxDocumentation Command - Part 1: Merlin

(Uncredited co-author) OCaml development has never been more enchanting, thanks to Merlin – the wizard of the editor realm. The magic of Merlin is something that makes programming in OCaml a very nice experience. By Merlin, I don't mean the old gray-haired, staff-bearing magic guy. I'm talking about the editor service that provides modern IDE features for OCaml. Merlin currently has an arsenal of tools that enable code navigation, completion, and a myriad of others. To use Merlin, we give it commands, kinda like readi...

Tarides Blog • 28th February 2024

Two Major Improvements in odoc: Introducing Search Engine Integration

In the world of OCaml documentation generation, there have been two significant enhancements that promise to make navigating OCaml documentation easier and more efficient. These improvements are divided into two distinct but interrelated components: changes in odoc itself and improvements in a search engine known as Sherlodoc. These updates make navigating OCaml documentation more efficient and user-friendly, benefiting both seasoned OCaml programmers and those just venturing into the world of O...

Tarides Blog • 7th February 2024

Improving OCaml.org to Provide an Engaging UX and Trusted User Resources

The OCaml.org team, which includes members from Tarides, have been working hard to improve OCaml.org. In the first half of 2023, our primary focus was on the much-needed overhaul of OCaml.org's documentation and overall UX Design. We aspired to enhance user experience and accessibility throughout the year, with an eye on boosting accessibility as we progress. The transition to more semantic HTML was a crucial step in addressing the previously subpar accessibility. Simultaneously, we've been cont...

Tarides Blog • 10th January 2024

Meet odoc, OCaml's Documentation Generator

Effective documentation is a cornerstone of software development. It helps developers understand how to use a language, its libraries, and its tooling, which leads to more robust and maintainable code. When it comes to OCaml, odoc is the wizard behind the scenes, ensuring developers not only understand OCaml's quirks but also become familiar with its libraries and tools. odoc powers the OCaml.org package documentation, so it's used widely by the entire OCaml community. odoc is a documentation ge...

Tarides Blog • 20th December 2023

OCaml Survey: Developers' Perception, Interest, and Perceived Barriers

Tarides is conducting a survey targeting non-OCaml programmers to learn their thoughts about this functional programming language and uncover any misconceptions surrounding it. Please take a few mintues to fill it out if you haven't yet done so. This post shows our preliminary findings based on a relatively small sample size within the Twitter community. The survey aimed to shed light on the challenges hindering its broader acceptance among programmers unfamiliar with its ecosystem and principle...

Tarides Blog • 19th December 2022

OCaml 5 With Multicore Support Is Here!

It's here! It's finally here! On Friday, 16 December 2022, the OCaml community announced the official release of Multicore OCaml! From the beginning, Tarides has been deeply involved in OCaml's evolution, so we're very proud to present OCaml 5! Our work with the myriad of academics, industrial developers, and the entire OCaml community has been both inspiring and fulfilling. We look forward to continuing our collaboration for future iterations of OCaml. Watch KC's keynote to get a visual overvie...

Tarides Blog • 24th November 2022

Solve the 2022 Advent of Code Puzzles with OCaml

Too many programmers only know OCaml through a functional programming language overview course at university. They erroneously believe OCaml is used primarily in academia rather than in the real world. Not only is OCaml already used in several prominent businesses, it can also be used for fun projects, like the upcoming Advent of Code. Advent of Code is an annual online Advent calendar produced specifically for programmers. It publishes a series of daily puzzles, revealing a new puzzle every day...

Tarides Blog • 18th October 2022

OCaml's Platform Installer Alpha Release

Yesterday we announced the OCaml 5 beta release, and today we're excited to introduce the OCaml Platform Installer! The OCaml Platform is the recommended toolchain when working with OCaml. This new installer enables programmers to quickly set up the OCaml developer environment, so they don't need to waste precious coding time with a lengthy installation process. If you come across any obstacles, the Platform team encourages you to open a GitHub Issue. We've also updated the state of the Platform...

Tarides Blog • 12th October 2022

8 OCaml Libraries to Make Your Life Easier

OCaml is a statically-typed programming language that emphasizes readability, programmer efficiency, and semantic clarity. This powerful and efficient language has been gaining popularity among developers. The growing adoption of OCaml is because it's fast, type safe, and secure. It can be used in industries where performance and security matter, like IoT, Data Analytics, or financial services.

Tarides Blog • 5th July 2022

The Magic of Merlin

Tarides provides support and development services for OCaml tools, packages, and libraries for our commercial partners and for the benefit of the entire OCaml community. We focus on groundbreaking innovation, feature development, and crucial maintenance of OCaml-based projects. One of these projects is called Merlin, an advanced Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Tarides Blog • 18th November 2021

Tarides & Hyper: Partners in Agricultural Innovation

We are thrilled to announce a partnership between Tarides and Hyper, a technology provider in the agritech space who’s building an "operating system for high-performing farms." Indoor and vertical farms are becoming tech businesses that require scalable, flexible, and easy-to-use tools to facilitate data analysis and thereby increase productivity. According to the State of Indoor Farming 2020 Report, “40% of vertical and indoor farms are implementing data analytics and control automation to incr

Professional • 26th October 2021

Irmin: an OCaml Library

Irmin is an open-source distributed, version-controlled storage system, most similar to a Git-like database. In the simplest terms, Irmin is an OCaml library that can be embedded into application code for the purpose of storing data.