Introducing the Dune Developer Preview: A New Era for OCaml Development

The Dune team is excited to announce the arrival of Dune Developer Preview, an experimental nightly release of Dune created to test improvements, including the new package management feature. This is a major milestone for OCaml development! We've been working hard improving Dune, and we're excited to introduce this new way to ease OCaml workflows. If you are an OCaml developer, this is the time to explore the future of package management and development yourself.

Why the Wait?

Our progress has been slower than anticipated because the Dune project is a complex endeavour. We’re committed to balancing support for existing OCaml users while introducing new workflows. While opam remains the stable workflow and isn't going away, a key difference is that the Dune Developer Preview showcases experimental workflows. We believe, once fully ready, this will be transformative for the community. Meanwhile, we continue to maintain opam and its infrastructure, ensuring the OCaml ecosystem remains robust, with recent updates like opam 2.2 bringing proper Windows support.

Why the Change?

We have listened over time to your feedback and learned that while functional, the existing tooling around OCaml can be quite cumbersome. Our mission is to make OCaml development easier, faster and more enjoyable, and Dune is now about to become that all-in-one tool which does just that. This separation will allow Dune to cut down on the complexity and make its development process much lighter.

The Developer Preview gives a sneak peek into these improvements and provides an opportunity for developers to get their hands on these tools before the official release.

What's New in Dune?

The Dune Developer Preview introduces several major changes in how OCaml developers will work. Probably the most notable change is that it includes package management right within Dune itself. No more juggling with multiple tools; Dune does it all in one go.

Accordingly, the new Dune comes as a binary. That means it no longer requires the usage of opam to install it. You can simply just install Dune within minutes, and you'll be off to a flying start. That gives you so much more time for actual development.

Drawing Inspiration from the Best

Throughout this process, we've drawn inspiration from other successful ecosystems. We learned from Rust, Go, and Erlang the power of letting developers test and provide feedback on a pre-general release, and we are doing the same with Dune: giving the OCaml community a chance to have their say in shaping up the final form of this tool. Your input will be invaluable in refining Dune and ensuring it meets your needs.

Join the Beta

We are looking for developers to participate in the Dune Developer Preview. Experienced developers can help us put the latest features of Dune through their paces so that we can fine-tune the workflow to be smooth and intuitive across a range of projects. Those new to OCaml can test the workflow from their perspective of working in other ecosystems. Whether you have been using OCaml for years or are new to the OCaml ecosystem, your input is crucial in helping us make Dune the recommended tool for OCaml development.

To become a beta tester, one only needs to download the Dune Developer Preview. You will get the very latest version and immediately start playing with the new workflows and package management features. Your feedback will help to further shape the future of OCaml tooling, and we want to hear your thoughts on everything from usability to performance enhancements.

Measuring Success

Our goal is clear: use OCaml with as little ceremony as possible, so we set a few key benchmarks to make that happen. First: via Dune, the user should be able to fire up a new project in less than 10 seconds with no extra tooling required. This level of speed makes all the difference during everyday hacking.

We also monitor general developer satisfaction with the new Dune workflows. For the Net Promoter Score, we will know how likely a user is to recommend Dune to other users. Our objective is to reach +80, which shows great approval and satisfaction within the community.

What's Next?

This is only the beginning of the Dune Developer Preview. We will regularly update and enhance it based on feedback from beta testers. This includes polishing the new Dune Toolchain feature in order to automatically manage OCaml versions and development tools, and exploring new distribution channels in order for Dune to be even easier to download and use.

This is huge for OCaml, and we are excited to have you along for the ride. Why wait? Download the Dune Developer Preview today, and give some of the new workflows a try before letting us know what you think. With your help, we can make Dune the go-to tool for all OCaml development.

We can't wait to hear from you — and happy coding!