How many Ocaml programs distributed via Homebrew ?

What is Ocaml ? 🔗

OCaml (formerly Objective Caml) is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language that extends the functional language Caml with object-oriented features. Created in 1996 by Xavier Leroy and researchers at Inria, it is widely recognized for combining the expressiveness and safety of functional programming with high performance and practical utility for industrial systems.

Key Characteristics 🔗

OCaml belongs to the ML (Meta Language) family of languages and is distinct for its robust static type system.

• Multi-Paradigm Support: While primarily functional, it seamlessly supports imperative and object-oriented programming styles, allowing developers to mix approaches as needed.
• Type System: It features strong static typing with powerful type inference, meaning the compiler deduces types automatically so programmers rarely need to declare them manually.
• Performance: It compiles to efficient native code that is often comparable in speed to C++, while also offering a bytecode compiler for portability.
• Safety: Its strict type checking eliminates many common runtime errors (like null pointer exceptions) at compile time.

Core Features 🔗

The language provides sophisticated tools for building complex, reliable software systems.

• Pattern Matching: A powerful mechanism for checking data against structural patterns, simplifying complex logic and data manipulation.
• Module System: An advanced system that allows modules to be parameterized by other modules (functors), enabling high-level abstraction and code reuse.
• Automatic Memory Management: It uses a fast, incremental garbage collector that manages memory automatically, avoiding manual allocation errors.

Usage and Ecosystem 🔗

OCaml was originally developed in the context of automated theorem proving but has expanded into broader domains.

• Applications: It is used in systems programming, financial trading (notably by Jane Street), static analysis tools, and compilers (like the Rust compiler’s early versions).
• Tooling: The ecosystem includes the OPAM package manager, the Dune build system, and an interactive top-level (REPL) for rapid testing.
• Influence: It has significantly influenced other modern languages, including F# (which is essentially OCaml for .NET) and Scala.

Statistics of ocaml programming language 🔗

On December 16th 2025, The number of CLI apps written in ocaml and distributed via Homebrew Core Formulae is 30 apps.

You may need to compare it to Rust , Go , Zig , R , or Erlang .

Apps written in ocaml and distributed via Homebrew Core Formulae 🔗

• camlpdf : OCaml library for reading, writing and modifying PDF files
• cpdf : PDF Command-line Tools
• ott : Tool for writing definitions of programming languages and calculi
• rocq-elpi : Elpi extension language for Rocq
• stanc3 : Stan transpiler
• bibtex2html : BibTeX to HTML converter
• camlp5 : Preprocessor and pretty-printer for OCaml
• hyperkit : Toolkit for embedding hypervisor capabilities in your application
• ledit : Line editor for interactive commands
• ocaml-findlib : OCaml library manager
• omake : Build system designed for scalability, portability, and concision
• opam : OCaml package manager
• camlp-streams : Stream and Genlex libraries for use with Camlp4 and Camlp5
• haxe : Multi-platform programming language
• menhir : LR(1) parser generator for the OCaml programming language
• ocaml-zarith : OCaml library for arbitrary-precision arithmetic
• semgrep : Easily detect and prevent bugs and anti-patterns in your codebase
• flow : Static type checker for JavaScript
• pdfsandwich : Generate sandwich OCR PDFs from scanned file
• rocq : Proof assistant for higher-order logic
• unison : File synchronization tool
• hevea : LaTeX-to-HTML translator
• ocamlbuild : Generic build tool for OCaml
• one-ml : Reboot of ML, unifying its core and (now first-class) module layers
• dune : Composable build system for OCaml
• math-comp : Mathematical Components for the Coq proof assistant
• coccinelle : Program matching and transformation engine for C code
• comby : Tool for changing code across many languages
• zero-install : Decentralised cross-platform software installation system
• ocaml-num : OCaml legacy Num library for arbitrary-precision arithmetic

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you know a person who can benefit from this information, send them a link of this post. If you want to get notified about new posts, follow me on YouTube , Twitter (x) , LinkedIn , and GitHub .