melange

Melange is a backend for the OCaml compiler that emits JavaScript.

Created: by Pradeep Gowda Updated: Sep 11, 2023 Tagged: melange · ocaml

Melange is a backend for the OCaml compiler that emits JavaScript. Melange strives to provide the best integration with both the OCaml and JavaScript ecosystems. A small write-up with more details on the motivation behind this project can be found in the announcement blog post.

A few weeks after the rebranding of BuckleScript to ReScript, António Monteiro starts working on a fork of BuckleScript with a simple (not easy) goal: replace the Ninja build system, which BuckleScript had been using from its creation, with Dune, which is the most used build system for OCaml projects.

This fork of BuckleScript is later named Melange. After finishing the switch from Ninja to Dune, several additional features are added to bring it closer to OCaml. Some examples are the upgrade of the OCaml compiler version used by Melange, or modeling the changes to the OCaml compiler that Melange uses as just a plain library, instead of a full fork of the upstream compiler.

In September 2022, Ahrefs decides to invest on Melange by funding a project to deepen the integration between Dune and Melange. This project achieves its completion in Spring 2023, with the migration of Ahrefs frontend codebase to Melange and the new public releases that support it: version 3.8 of Dune and 1.0 of Melange.