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Portability Issues

Supported platforms

The bytecoded system currently runs on any POSIX-compliant operating system with an ANSI-compliant C compiler (and tries hard to accommodate deviations from POSIX and ANSI-C). It should run straight out of the box on all Unix and Unix-compatible systems, including Linux and MacOS X. (See below for MS Windows.) While not mandatory, it is recommended to use the GNU gcc compiler to compile the distribution.

The native-code compiler currently supports the following processor/operating system combinations:

ProcessorsOperating systems
Tier 1 platforms
(actively used and maintained by the core Caml team):
AMD64 (Intel and AMD x86 processors in 64-bit mode)Linux, MacOS X
IA32 (Intel and AMD x86 processors in 32-bit mode)Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, Microsoft Windows
Power PCLinux, Mac OS X
ARMLinux
Tier 2 platforms
(maintained but less actively, with help from users):
AMD64Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
IA32NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris 9
PowerPCNetBSD
SPARCSolaris 9, Linux, NetBSD

Other operating systems for the processors above have not been tested, but the compiler may work under other operating systems with little work.

Ports for Microsoft Windows

There are no less than four ports of Objective Caml for Microsoft Windows available:

Here is a summary of the main differences between these ports:

Native Microsoft Native MinGWCygwin
Third-party software required
   -  for base bytecode system
   -  for ocamlc -custom
   -  for native-code generation
 
none
MSVC
MSVC + MASM
 
none
Cygwin
Cygwin
 
none
Cygwin
Cygwin
Speed of bytecode interpreter 70 %100 %100 %
Debuggerpartialpartialfull
Libraries
   -  Unix
   -  Threads
   -  Graphics
 
partial
yes
yes
 
partial
yes
yes
 
full
yes
no
Restrictions on generated executables nonenoneyes*

* 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 MSVC or by MinGW have no such restrictions.