HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
ocaml
dune
OCaml2017–2025
ocaml / dune

dune

A composable build system for OCaml.

Developer Tools
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
11Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A composable build system for OCaml.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-07-16 14:15:39 UTC to 2025-11-25 14:07:06 UTC.

012342017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404

What Hacker News says

13 sources
johnisgood·Aug 14, 2025
Actually, I did an "opam update" (after my comment that stated there was "3.7.0") and "opam show dune --all-versions" no longer shows "3.7.0". :| It shows: all-versions 1.6.3 1.9.3 1.11.4 2.3.0 2.4.0 2.5.1 2.6.1 2.7.1 2.9.3 3.5.0 3.6.2 3.10.0 3.12.1 3.12.2 3.15.3 3.17.2 3.18.2 3.19.0 3.19.1 You are right! So I suppose it is either 3.6.2 or 3.10.0. Can you use either of these versions? Your alternative really is: $ opam pin add dune https://github.com/ocaml/dune/releases/download/3.7.0/dune-3.7.0.tbz If you really must need "3.7.0". Just FWIW, maybe it might work the way you wanted it to if you do not update the registry; worth a try. It should be able to fetch the correct tarball.
In OCaml as my primary language
johnisgood·Feb 24, 2020
> Wasn't `oasis` the legacy way of building projects? Thought everyone used `dune` now? Yeah, I believe new projects tend to use dune, and some older projects have switched from OASIS to dune. I personally still use OASIS mainly due to laziness. :D > But I need a quality material on everything you can do with `dune`. Can you recommend such? I have not used dune myself, but a quick glance at these sites suggests that they may be quite useful: - https://dune.build/ - https://dune.build/examples - https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ - https://github.com/ocaml/dune/blob/master/doc/quick-start.rs... - https://github.com/ocaml/dune/tree/master/example - https://ocamlverse.github.io/content/quickstart_ocaml_projec... - https://medium.com/@bobbypriambodo/starting-an-ocaml-app-pro... For opam: - https://opam.ocaml.org/doc/FAQ.html - https://opa
Read the rest
m.ocaml.org/doc/Packaging.html - https://opam.ocaml.org/doc/Manual.html - https://github.com/ocaml/opam/tree/master/tests/packages I hope this helps.
In OCaml 4.10
anuragsoni·Jun 28, 2018
I'd say if you ever get the time again, give OCaml another look. The toolchain experience has been improving at a rapid pace! I started to explore OCaml again earlier this year and the day to day tooling around it has felt at par or better than my experience with other languages. Between Opam [1], Dune[2] and utop[3] the "new comer experience" has been really good so far. The editor integration with vim/emacs has been top notch, and visual studio code has turned into a really nice option as well for people who don't like vim/emacs. I'm sure there is still room for improvement, but i'd say its atleast heading in the right direction! [1] https://github.com/ocaml/opam [2] https://github.com/ocaml/dune [3] https://github.com/diml/utop [4] https://github.com/ocaml-ppx/ocamlformat
In State of Multicore OCaml [pdf]
djs55·Aug 26, 2017
I'm also an OCaml old timer and I think I can relate too. I believe the recent tooling changes are going in the right direction and will eventually fix several of these problems, for example: There's a push to remove "optional dependencies" which are the reason why opam dependencies rebuild again and again: http://rgrinberg.com/posts/optional-dependencies-considered-... For example in the Mirage project we've been working on this https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ann-major-releases-of-cohttp-con... but it has caused some breakage here and there. jbuilder (from Jane Street) is excellent: expressive, easy to understand, builds packages extremely quickly, is actively developed, has minimal dependencies and a lovely manual http://jbuilder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ It takes care of generating boilerplate for other tools like merlin (which to be hone
Read the rest
st I never got around to manually configuring). There's also work to integrate it with utop https://github.com/janestreet/jbuilder/issues/114 jbuilder also supports building multiple libraries in one big source tree, so we could switch to a package lockfile model: the author uses opam to create a solution to the package constraints and checks in the specific versions known to work, the build clones the dependency sources and jbuilder builds it all simultaneously. I'm keen to try this on one of my larger projects so that "git clone; make" just works, irrespective of where the host OCaml comes from. PPX syntax extensions depend on specific compiler versions, so when (for example) homebrew updates to OCaml 4.05 you might find that extensions you need have not been ported yet. ocaml-migrate-parsetree aims to fix this problem http://ocamllabs.io/projects/2017/02/15/ocaml-migrate-parset... There's obviously still plenty of work to do, but I think things are improving!
In New implementation of Git in OCaml
mercurial·Jul 16, 2017
> jbuilder (https://github.com/janestreet/jbuilder) has markedly improved the build system story. Importantly, the community understands that this is an issue and is actively working towards making the situation better. Well, that's good to know. > Type declaration at the code level is optional. You could always annotate your code with types, and the type checker will ensure that the annotated types are compatible with the inferred ones. If you would like to know "what type is this 'e' variable", there is merlin (https://github.com/ocaml/merlin), which integrates with popular editors. I am aware of that. I shouldn't have to use Merlin to read third-party code from github, and god forbid that you have to do code review on a "let's all rely on type inference" codebase in a web browser. I think Rust strikes the right balance here, by enforci
Read the rest
ng the use of type signatures at function boundaries (which also lets it offer world-class error messages). > Reg. typeclasses, there has been enormous amount of work put into modular implicits (http://ocamllabs.io/doc/implicits.html). It is likely to be the next major features in OCaml along with multicore. I know about implicits. I also know that multicore has been "just around the corner" for a few years now, this does not bode well for implicits (which have also been "in progress" for a long time). This also touches another issue with the OCaml maintainers: little in the way of information seems to filter down to the unwashed masses, and let us not speak of the word "roadmap"...
In A deep dive into Multicore OCaml garbage collector
kcsrk·Jul 16, 2017
There has been developments along some of these issues: - jbuilder (https://github.com/janestreet/jbuilder) has markedly improved the build system story. Importantly, the community understands that this is an issue and is actively working towards making the situation better. - Type declaration at the code level is optional. You could always annotate your code with types, and the type checker will ensure that the annotated types are compatible with the inferred ones. If you would like to know "what type is this 'e' variable", there is merlin (https://github.com/ocaml/merlin), which integrates with popular editors. - Reg. typeclasses, there has been enormous amount of work put into modular implicits (http://ocamllabs.io/doc/implicits.html). It is likely to be the next major features in OCaml along with multicore.
In A deep dive into Multicore OCaml garbage collector

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.