Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

OCaml for Windows Discontinuation and BinTray 403 Errors

Open
#548 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
ocaml

Research direction

Start by reviewing the Windows build procedure and repo/win32/compilers/4.07.0+mingw64c.comp, including its unavailable BinTray source and the documented local archive workaround. Investigate a sustainable replacement for the discontinued opam-repository-mingw and verify that the Windows compiler can be obtained and used by the build procedure.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The current build procedure for Windows uses the discontinued (as of August 2021) opam-repository-mingw.

Further, the mingw64c compiler from that repository is currently unavailable with a 403 (forbidden) error. I'm not sure whether this is due to BinTray rate-limiting or due to the repository being discontinued. Thankfully the WayBackMachine does have a previous copy of the file.

It seems necessary to find an alternative long-term solution for building on Windows.


As a temporary work-around, you can manually download and install the compiler by downloading the archived file from your browser, then change repo/win32/compilers/4.07.0+mingw64c.comp as follows:

opam-version: "1"
version: "4.07.0"
-src: "https://dl.bintray.com/fdopen/prebuild-win32-ocaml-packages/4.07.0+mingw64c.tar.xz"
+archive: "file:///home/krak/Downloads/4.07.0+mingw64c.tar.xz"

build: [
  [ "sed" "-i" "s#@PREFIX@#%{prefix}%#g" "lib/ocaml/ld.conf" ]
  [ "sed" "-i" "s#@PREFIX@#%{prefix}%#g" "lib/ocaml/Makefile.config" ]
  [ "dash.exe" "install.sh" prefix ]
]

packages: [
  "base-unix"
  "base-bigarray"
  "base-threads"
]
env: [
  [OCAMLLIB = "%{prefix}%/lib/ocaml"]
  [CAML_LD_LIBRARY_PATH = "%{lib}%/stublibs"]
  [CC = "x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe"]
  [CPP = "x86_64-w64-mingw32-cpp.exe"]
]
Dominant language
OCaml
Stars
1.2k
Forks
214
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from moby/vpnkit

All issues in moby/vpnkit

Similar issues

More Build System issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.