The OCaml build system Dune keeps track of a project’s dependencies on external software packages. Historically however, Dune has been unable to download or install these packages completely independently, relying on additional tools to perform these functions. This complicated the development of projects in OCaml as users needed to be fluent in both Dune as well as an additional tool (often opam) to manage a project’s dependencies. Recent work on Dune has added package management capabilities directly to the build system, enabling workflows where Dune is the only tool necessary to develop software in OCaml.

This talk will showcase Dune’s new package management features by developing an OCaml program starting from a bare system with no OCaml tooling installed.