ocaml/README.win32

        Release notes on the MS Windows port of Objective Caml
        ----------------------------------------------------------

REQUIREMENTS:

This port runs under Windows 95 and Windows NT on Intel-based machines.
Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups are not supported. Windows NT
on non-Intel processors has not been tested.

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

Linking Caml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom) requires the
Microsoft Visual C++ compiler.

The native-code compiler (ocamlopt) requires Visual C++ and the
Microsoft assembler MASM version 6.


INSTALLATION:

The binary distribution consists in a .zip archive file. This .zip
contains long filenames and cannot therefore be unpacked with pkunzip
version 2. Use either Winzip (shareware) or the NT/95 version of unzip
(freeware):
        ftp://ftp.winsite.com/pub/pc/winnt/misc/wznt56.exe
        ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/WIN32/unz512xN.exe

Unzipping the distribution creates (among others) the following
directories and files:

        ocaml\ocamlwin.exe     The toplevel application
        ocaml\ocamlwin.ini     Its configuration file
        ocaml\bin\             The command-line compilers and tools
        ocaml\lib\             The standard library files

Installing the toplevel application:

  Copy the file ocaml\ocamlwin.ini to the Windows system directory
  (e.g. C:\windows). This file assumes that the Caml distribution
  resides in C:\ocaml. If this is not the case, edit the file ocamlwin.ini
  and change the line that says

          CmdLine=ocamlrun c:\ocaml\bin\ocaml.exe -I c:\ocaml\lib
  to
          CmdLine=ocamlrun <caml_dir>\bin\ocaml.exe -I <caml_dir>\lib
  e.g.
          CmdLine=ocamlrun d:\lang\ocaml\bin\ocaml.exe -I d:\lang\ocaml\lib

Installing the command-line tools:

  You must add the ocaml\bin subdirectory to the PATH variable, e.g.

          set PATH=%PATH%;D:\lang\ocaml\bin

  Running directly the tools (e.g. typing D:\lang\ocaml\bin\ocamlc)
  will not work if the ocaml\bin directory is not in PATH, because ocamlc
  and the other tools will be unable to find the Caml runtime system
  ocamlrun.exe.

  The command-line tools assume that the standard library resides in
  C:\ocaml\lib. If you have unpacked it elsehwere, define the CAMLLIB
  environment variable to point to the standard library directory, e.g.

          set CAMLLIB=D:\lang\ocaml\lib


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.

In addition to Visual C++ 4.0 and MASM 6, you will also need a healthy
set of Unix / GNU utilities that understands long file names
(see e.g. ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/microlib/nt/gnu/).

The bootstrap compilers provided in the Unix distribution (boot/ocamlc
and boot/ocamllex) must be replaced by those from the binary Windows
distribution (ocaml\bin\ocamlc.exe and ocaml\bin\ocamllex.exe).

The sources for the toplevel graphical user interface are not
publically available.


RANDOM NOTES:

* The VC++ compiler does a poor job on byterun/interp.c. Consequently,
the performance of bytecode programs is about half of that obtained
under Unix/GCC on similar hardware. GCC would give much better
performance, but none of the currently available ports of GCC for
Win32 is sufficiently complete, robust and stable to compile Caml
Special Light.

* The "num", "str" and "graph" libraries are available under Win32.
("graph" works only under the toplevel application).
The other external libraries ("unix", "threads", "camltk4") make heavy
use of Unix system calls and require considerable work to run under
Win32.


CREDITS:

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

The graphical user interface for the toplevel is due to Jean-Marie
Geffroy at INRIA Rocquencourt.