T2: OCaml tutorial

  • Yaron Minsky Jane Street
  • Anil Madhavapeddy University of Cambridge
September 23, 2013 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Abstract

OCaml is a statically typed functional language with a fast native code compiler and incremental garbage collector. In this tutorial, we will first introduce the basics of OCaml using an interactive environment running in a web browser, as well as a local install of OCaml using the OPAM package manager. Then, we will introduce Jane Street's Core library, which is an industrial-strength alternative to the OCaml standard library. Core is designed with consistency, explicitness and efficiency in mind. We will build up to the construction of a simple publish-subscribe data broker using the Async monadic concurrency library.

Preparations

The Real World OCaml tutorial is intended to be interactive, with a guided introduction to building a distributed broker service using the Core and Async libraries. Complete beginners can also work through the first few chapters of the O'Reilly "Real World OCaml" book, with questions being answered by the authors.

Before arriving for the tutorial, it would save time if you set up the compilation environment. You will need at least OCaml 4.01.0, which you can easily install using the OPAM package manager.

  1. Install OPAM by following the quick-start guide at this page.

(You can use OCaml 3.12.1 or greater to get this in place, or just use binary packages if available on your platform.)

2.Once OPAM is installed, compile the 4.01.0 compiler by running:

$ opam update

$ opam switch 4.01.0 $ eval opam config env

  1. Install the Core and Async packages required for the tutorial.

    $ opam install utop core_extended async core_bench $ utop # to test it out

PCRE and pkg-config need to be installed before Core_extended will compile.

On MacOS X:

$ brew install pcre pkg-config

And Debian/Ubuntu users should have it in their respective APT repositories.

This will take 10-15 minutes depending on the speed of your computer, so it's best to get it done before the tutorial starts.

Yaron Minsky

Yaron Minsky Yaron Minsky obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2002, focusing on distributed systems. In 2003, he joined Jane Street where he founded the quantitative research group and introduced OCaml to the organization. Today, he leads Jane Street's technology group, which uses OCaml as its primary development language.

Anil Madhavapeddy

Anil Madhavapeddy Dr. Anil Madhavapeddy is a Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson College Cambridge based in the Systems Research Group in the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Dr. Madhavapeddy was on the original team at Cambridge that developed the Xen hypervisor, and subsequently served as the product director for XenSource/Citrix before returning to academia. Prior to obtaining his PhD in 2006 from the University of Cambridge, Dr. Madhavapeddy had a diverse background in industry at Network Appliance, NASA, and Internet Vision. In addition to professional and academic activities, Dr. Madhavapeddy is an active member of the open source development community with the OpenBSD operating system and various networking, database and web applications, a member of the steering committee for Commercial Users of Functional Programming, and on the boards of startup companies such as Ashima Arts.