;; Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
;; See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
;;
;; Author: Howard X. Abrams <http://gitlab.com/howardabrams>
;; Maintainer: Howard X. Abrams
;; Created: August 24, 2022
;;
;; While obvious, GNU Emacs does not include this file or project.
;;
;; *NB:* Do not edit this file. Instead, edit the original literate file at:
;; ~/other/hamacs/ha-programming-ocaml.org
;; And tangle the file to recreate this one.
;;
;;; Code:
#+end_src
* Introduction
After reading [[ https://batsov.com/articles/2022/08/19/learning-ocaml/][Batsov's OCaml overview essay]], I became intrigued with learning more about it. Like him, I’ll probably start learning OCaml using the following resources:
* [[https://ocaml.org/docs/up-and-running][Getting Started]]: At the primary ocaml website.
* [[https://dev.realworldocaml.org/][Real World OCaml]]: A free book about OCaml, that's considered one of the best starting points in the community.
* [[https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html][Cornell University's course on OCaml]]: It's taught at the university, but the textbook and the video lectures are freely available online.
* [[https://ocamlverse.github.io/][OCamlverse]]: An OCaml community wiki.
As these [[http://dev.realworldocaml.org/install.html][installation instructions state]], the primary binary to install is the /package manager/, like:
#+begin_src sh
brew install opam
#+end_src
Initialize the opam package database by running:
#+begin_src sh
opam init
#+end_src
The book suggests installing utop:
#+begin_src sh
opam install core core_bench utop
#+end_src
The book also mentions that opam comes with a user-setup package to install Emacs configs. You can install it as follows, along with some related packages:
#+begin_src sh
opam install user-setup tuareg ocamlformat merlin
opam user-setup install
#+end_src
But I won’t be doing that, as I can configure it.
* Basics
I kicked off this code by following with [[https://batsov.com/articles/2022/08/23/setting-up-emacs-for-ocaml-development/][these instructions]] from Batsov.
Use the [[https://github.com/ocaml/tuareg][tuareg package]] for OCaml programming:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(use-package tuareg
:mode (((rx ".ocamlinit" eos) . tuareg-mode)))
#+end_src
Use [[https://github.com/ocaml/dune/blob/main/editor-integration/emacs/dune.el][dune.el]] to edit Dune project files:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(use-package dune)
#+end_src
[[https://github.com/ocaml/merlin][Merlin]] provides advanced IDE features:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(use-package merlin
:config
(add-hook 'tuareg-mode-hook #'merlin-mode)
;; we're using flycheck instead
(setq merlin-error-after-save nil))
(use-package merlin-eldoc
:hook ((tuareg-mode) . merlin-eldoc-setup))
#+end_src
The flycheck package uses Merlin internally:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(use-package flycheck-ocaml
:config (flycheck-ocaml-setup))
#+end_src
If I get into [[https://opam.ocaml.org/blog/about-utop/][utop]], I can also setup some integration with it like this:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(use-package utop
:config
(add-hook 'tuareg-mode-hook #'utop-minor-mode))
#+end_src
* Technical Artifacts :noexport:
Let's =provide= a name so we can =require= this file:
