Release notes on the MS Windows ports of Objective Caml ------------------------------------------------------- Starting with OCaml 3.05, there are no less than three ports of Objective Caml for MS Windows available: - a native Win32 port, built with the Microsoft development tools; - a native Win32 port, built with the MinGW development tools; - a port consisting of the Unix sources compiled under the Cygwin Unix-like environment for Windows. Here is a summary of the main differences between these ports: Native MS Native MinGW Cygwin Third-party software required - for base bytecode system none none none - for ocamlc -custom MSVC MinGW or Cygwin Cygwin - for native-code generation MSVC+MASM MinGW or Cygwin Cygwin Speed of bytecode interpreter 70% 100% 100% Replay debugger no no yes The Unix library partial partial full The Threads library yes yes no 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 MS VC or by MinGW have no such restrictions. The remainder of this document gives more information on each port. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The native Win32 port built with Microsoft Visual C --------------------------------------------------- REQUIREMENTS: This port runs under MS Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Windows 95, 98 and ME are also supported, but less reliably. The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, ...) runs without any additional tools. Statically linking Caml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom) requires the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. Dynamic loading of DLLs is supported out of the box, without additional software. The native-code compiler (ocamlopt) requires Visual C++ and the Microsoft assembler MASM version 6.11 or later. MASM can be downloaded for free from Microsoft's Web site; for directions, see http://www.easystreet.com/~jkirwan/pctools.html or http://www2.dgsys.com/~raymoon/faq/masm.html or the comp.lang.asm.x86 FAQ. The LablTk GUI requires Tcl/Tk 8.3. Windows binaries are available from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl832.exe. INSTALLATION: The binary distribution is a self-installing executable archive. Just run it and it should install OCaml automatically. If you are using Windows 95, 98 or ME, you need to adjust environment variables as follows: - add the "bin" subdirectory of the OCaml installation directory to the PATH variable; - set the OCAMLLIB variable to the "lib" subdirectory of the OCaml installation directory. For instance, if you installed OCaml in C:\Program Files\Objective Caml, add the following two lines at the end of C:\autoexec.bat: set PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files\Objective Caml\bin" set OCAMLLIB=C:\Program Files\Objective Caml\lib No such tweaking of environment variables is needed under NT, 2000 and XP. To run programs that use the LablTK GUI, the directory where the DLLs tk83.dll and tcl83.dll were installed (by the Tcl/Tk installer) must be added to the PATH environment variable. To compile programs that use the LablTK GUI, the directory where the libraries tk83.lib and tcl83.lib were installed (by the Tcl/Tk installer) must be added to the library search path in the LIB environment variable. E.g. if Tcl/Tk was installed in C:\tcl, add "C:\tcl\lib" to the LIB environment variable. 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 NT, 2000, or XP (we advise against compiling under Windows 95/98/ME) - Visual C++ version 6 or 7 - MASM version 6.11 (see above) - The CygWin port of GNU tools, available from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ - TCL/TK version 8.3 (for the LablTK GUI) (see above). To recompile, start a 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 variables that need to be changed are PREFIX where to install everything TK_ROOT where TCL/TK was installed 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 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", "labltk", and large parts of "unix". * The replay debugger is not supported. 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 Jacob Navia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The native Win32 port built with Mingw -------------------------------------- REQUIREMENTS: This port runs under MS Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Windows 95, 98 and ME are also supported, but less reliably. The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, ...) runs without any additional tools. The native-code compiler (ocamlopt), as well as static linking of Caml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom), require either the MinGW development tools, which is free software available at http://www.mingw.org/ or the Cygwin development tools (also free software), available at http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ The LablTk GUI requires Tcl/Tk 8.3. Windows binaries are available from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl832.exe. INSTALLATION: There is no binary distribution yet, so please follow the compilation instructions below. RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES: You will need the following software components to perform the recompilation: - Windows NT, 2000, or XP (we advise against compiling under Windows 95/98/ME) - Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ - TCL/TK version 8.3 (see above). Start a Cygwin shell and unpack the source distribution (ocaml-X.YZ.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 cp config/Makefile.mingw config/Makefile Then, edit config/Makefile as needed, following the comments in this file. Normally, the only variables that need to be changed are PREFIX where to install everything TK_ROOT where TCL/TK was installed 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", "labltk", and large parts of "unix". * The replay debugger is not supported. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Cygwin port of Objective Caml --------------------------------- REQUIREMENTS: This port requires the Cygwin environment from Cygnus/RedHat, which is freely available at: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ This port runs under all versions of MS Windows supported by Cygwin. INSTALLATION: For various reasons, no binary distribution of this port is available. You need to recompile from the source distribution. RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES: Just follow the instructions for Unix machines given in the file INSTALL. NOTES: The libraries available in this port are "num", "str", "unix" and "labltk". "graph" and "threads" are not available yet. The replay debugger is supported.