Emacs

Setting up Emacs

There is a new initiative in the community -- user-setup package, I personally didn't try it, but on a first glance it looks pretty nice and prominent. You can try it yourself on your risk, and actually I'm encouraging everyone to do this, but here I will share my setup, as it is what I've tested personally. But, maybe later we will rewrite this page to user-setup.

Dependencies

Our setup will depend on three packages:

• Tuareg - major mode for editing OCaml source code;
• Merlin - Tuareg minor mode that adds incremental compilation, intellisense-like completion, and other neat stuff;
• ocp-indent - external indentation program that knows OCaml very well in comparison with the default tuaregs indentation engine that is just a set of regular expressions.

To install them from OPAM use:

opam install tuareg merlin ocp-indent

You will also need auto-complete mode for EMacs, available in elpa and melpa. To enable this (and also marmalade) you need the following at the start of your .emacs:

(setq package-archives '(("gnu" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
                         ("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/")
                         ("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/")))
(package-initialize)

After this issue M-x package-list-packages and find out company package with the latest version, and install it.

Main configuration file

After everything is ready, you can store the following in ocaml.el, put it into your emacs search path, and load in .emacs with (require 'ocaml) instruction. (Of course, you can just copy-paste this directly into your .emacs, but I prefer to keep it clean).

(defun opam-path (path)
  (let ((opam-share-dir
         (shell-command-to-string
          "echo -n `opam var share`")))
    (concat opam-share-dir "/" path)))

(add-to-list 'load-path (opam-path "emacs/site-lisp"))

;; comment out the following two lines if you would like to use tuareg from melpa
(add-to-list 'load-path (opam-path "tuareg"))
(load "tuareg-site-file")

(require 'ocp-indent)
(require 'merlin)
(require 'company)
(add-to-list 'company-backends 'merlin-company-backend)
(add-hook 'merlin-mode-hook 'company-mode)

(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c TAB") 'company-complete)
(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-d") 'merlin-document)
(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c d") 'merlin-destruct)


(setq merlin-completion-with-doc t)
(setq merlin-use-auto-complete-mode nil)
(setq tuareg-font-lock-symbols t)
(setq merlin-command 'opam)
(setq merlin-locate-preference 'mli)

(defun change-symbol (x y)
  (setcdr (assq x tuareg-font-lock-symbols-alist) y))

(defun ocp-indent-buffer ()
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (mark-whole-buffer)
    (ocp-indent-region (region-beginning)
                       (region-end))))

(add-hook 'tuareg-mode-hook
          (lambda ()
            (merlin-mode)
            (local-set-key (kbd "C-c c") 'recompile)
            (local-set-key (kbd "C-c C-c") 'recompile)
            (auto-fill-mode)
            (tuareg-make-indentation-regexps)
            (add-hook 'before-save-hook 'ocp-indent-buffer nil t)))

(defun opam-env ()
  (interactive nil)
  (dolist (var
           (car (read-from-string
                 (shell-command-to-string "opam env --sexp"))))
    (setenv (car var) (cadr var))))

(provide 'ocaml)

Configuring Merlin

Merlin should work out of box, but it only knows vanilla OCaml by default. So, we need to teach him to use BAP and Core_kernel. Merlin is pretty clever, so it won't take to much time, you just need to create .merlin file in the project root, and describe what libraries are you using and how you structured your project. Something like this should work:

PKG core_kernel
PKG bap
PKG ocamlgraph

B _build
FLG -short-paths
FLG -w -4-33-40-41-42-43-34-44

Note that Merlin is already configured for bap-plugins and bap repositories. If your're working in this repositories and you want to add some options to your subproject, like adding new package or flag, then create a .merlin file in your folder and add REC line into it, this will automatically include parent .merlin, e.g.,

REC
PKG cmdliner

Sometimes Merlin gets very confused, especially when after you've made opam update. In that case it can be healed by killing him and starting from scratch with M-x merlin-restart-process command.

Extras

Using Helm

If you prefer helm then the following three lines will greatly improve your experience with OCaml,

(add-hook 'merlin-mode-hook 'merlin-use-merlin-imenu)

(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c TAB") 'helm-company)
(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c i") 'helm-imenu)
(define-key merlin-mode-map (kbd "C-c I") 'helm-imenu-in-all-buffers)

Also, for project-wise search and file opening, which is OCaml-specific, so it is good to place it in your .emacs file, you can add the following,

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x b") 'helm-buffers-list)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x p") 'helm-browse-project)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x l") 'helm-grep-do-git-grep)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x a") 'helm-do-grep-ag)

The last one requires the ag, which could be installed with sudo apt install silversearcher-ag on an Ubuntu machine.

Setting the project directory

To make the bap root folder (or any other project root folder) the default folder, so that different search and file opening functions will start from the top of your project, add the .dir-locals.el file to the root of BAP, with the following contents,

((nil . ((default-directory . "<path-to-the-root>"))))

The path to the root has to be absolute, e.g., "~/bap" and be a literal string, otherwise emacs will complain about unsafe variables.