NOTE: This manual is a work in progress. Please let us know if you think something is missing by filing an issue, or join our Discord server.

Introduction

Caramel is a functional language for building type-safe, scalable, and maintainable applications.

It is built in OCaml 🐫 and maintained by Abstract Machines.

Caramel leverages:

  • the OCaml compiler, to provide you with a pragmatic type system and industrial-strength type safety.

  • the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems used in a wide range of industries.

Check out the CHANGELOG to see what's new.

For installation instructions see Installation.

Feature highlights

  • Excellent type-inferece, so you never need to annotate your code
  • Zero-cost type-safe interop with most existing Erlang and Elixir code
  • Has a reviewed standard library included
  • Supports sources in OCaml (and soon Reason syntax too)
  • Ships a single executable (caramel)
  • Has a built-in formatter (caramel fmt)

Philosophy & Goals

Caramel aims to make building type-safe concurrent programs a productive and fun experience.

Caramel should let anyone with existing OCaml or Reason experience be up and running without having to relearn the entire languages.

Caramel strives to integrate with the larger ecosystem of BEAM languages, like Erlang, Elixir, Gleam, Purerl, LFE, and Hamler.

Caramel should be a batteries included environment where you pay only for what you use.