Merlin is an editor service that provides modern IDE features for OCaml.

Emacs and Vim support is provided out-of-the-box. External contributors added support for Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text and Atom.

Easy installation with Opam

If you have a working Opam installation, Merlin is only two commands away:

opam install merlin
opam user-setup install

opam-user-setup takes care of configuring Emacs and Vim to make best use of your current install.

You can also configure the editor yourself, if you prefer.

Manually building and installing Merlin

Compilation

Dependencies: ocaml >= 4.02.3, ocamlfind, yojson.

./configure
 make

The configure script will check that all the dependencies are met, and will allow you to choose where to install Merlin.

Installation

If you haven't encountered any errors in the previous step, just run:

$ make install 

Installation directory is determined by the prefix selected by configure. It defaults to /usr/local.

Editor setup

To setup Emacs and Vim, you need to instruct them to run the appropriate script when an OCaml file is opened.

In the rest of the document, <SHARE_DIR> refers to the directory where Merlin data files are installed.

It will usually be:

• "/usr/local/share" if you used manual configuration Merlin
• "<prefix>/share" if you explicitly specified a prefix when configuring Merlin
• printed by the command opam config var share, if you used opam

Vim setup

Makes sure that ocamlmerlin binary can be found in PATH.

The only setup needed is to have the following directory in vim runtime path (append this to your .vimrc):

:set rtp+=<SHARE_DIR>/merlin/vim

The default configuration can be seen in:

<SHARE_DIR>/merlin/vim/plugin/merlin.vim

After adding merlin to vim runtime path, you will probably want to run :helptags <SHARE_DIR>/merlin/vim/doc to register Merlin documentation inside vim.

A more comprehensive documentation can be found on the vim-from-scratch wiki.

Emacs setup

Merlin comes with an emacs library (file: emacs/merlin.el) that implements a minor-mode that is supposed to be used on top of tuareg-mode.

All you need to do is add the following to your .emacs:

(push "<SHARE_DIR>/emacs/site-lisp" load-path) ; directory containing merlin.el
(setq merlin-command "<BIN_DIR>/ocamlmerlin")  ; needed only if ocamlmerlin not already in your PATH
(autoload 'merlin-mode "merlin" "Merlin mode" t)
(add-hook 'tuareg-mode-hook 'merlin-mode)
(add-hook 'caml-mode-hook 'merlin-mode)

merlin-mode will make use of auto-complete-mode (available by package.el and the MELPA repository) if it is installed.

A more comprehensive documentation can be found on the emacs-from-scratch wiki.

Other editors

The wiki also contains pages for:

• Acme
• Atom
• Spacemacs

External contributors have implemented modes for more editors:

• Visual Studio Code
• Sublime Text 3
• ocaml-merlin package for Atom
• nuclide for Atom includes Merlin support

Next steps

To use Merlin with a multi-file project, it is necessary to have a .merlin file.

Read more in the wiki to learn how to make full use of Merlin in your projects.

Development of Merlin

Most of the development happens through the github page.

The mailing list welcomes general questions and discussions.

Merlin Labels

Area/Emacs: Related to Emacs

Area/Vim: Related to Vim

Kind/Bug: This issue describes a problem

Kind/Docs: This issue describes a documentation change

Kind/Feature-Request: Solving this issue requires implementing a new feature

Kind/To-discuss: Discussion needed to converge on a solution; often aesthetic. See mailing list for discussion

Status/0-More-info-needed: More information is needed before this issue can be triaged

Status/0-Triage: This issue needs triaging

Status/1-Acknowledged: This issue has been triaged and is being investigated

Status/2-Regression: Known workaround to be applied and tested

Status/3-Fixed-need-test: This issue has been fixed and needs checking

Status/4-Fixed: This issue has been fixed!

Status/5-Awaiting-feedback: This issue requires feedback on a previous fix

You can see current areas of development in our Merlin Project Roadmaps that we keep up to date.

Contributing to Merlin

Merlin needs your help and contributions!

Reporting Issues

When you encounter an issue, please report it with as much detail as possible. A thorough bug report is always appreciated :)

Check that our issue database doesn't already include that problem/suggestion. You can click "subscribe" on issues to follow their progress and updates.

When reporting issues, please include:

• steps to reproduce the problem, if possible with some code triggering the issue,
• version of the tools you are using: operating system, editor, OCaml.

Try to be as specific as possible:

• avoid generic phrasing such as "doesn't work", explain why it is not working (editor is freezing, you got an error message, the answer is not what was expected, ...)
• include the content of error messages.

If it seems relevant, also include information about your development environment:

• the Opam version and switch in use,
• other toolchains involved (OCaml flavors, cygwin, C compiler, shell, ...),
• how the editor was setup.

Pull Requests

Found a bug and know how to fix it? Or have a feature you can implement directly? We appreciate pull requests to improve Merlin, and any significant fix should start life as an issue first.

Documentation and wiki

Help is greatly appreciated, the wiki needs love.

If the wiki didn't cover a topic and you found out the answer, updating the page or pointing out the issue will be very useful for future users.

Discussing with other Merlin users and contributors

Together with commenting on issues with direct feedback and relevant information, we use the mailing list to discuss ideas and current designs/implementations. User input helps us to converge on solutions, especially those for aesthetic and user-oriented topics.

List of Contributors

We would like to thank all people who contributed to Merlin.

Main collaborators:

• Frédéric Bour, main developer
• Thomas Refis, main developer
• Gemma Gordon, project manager
• Simon Castellan, contributed the initial Emacs mode

Contributors:

• Andrew Noyes
• Anil Madhavapeddy
• Anton Bachin
• Armaël Guéneau
• Arthur Wendling
• Benjamin San Souci
• Bernhard Schommer
• Chris Konstad
• Christopher Reichert
• Christophe Troestler
• David Allsopp
• Fabian Hemmer
• Fourchaux
• Gabriel Scherer
• Geoff Gole
• Gerd Stolpmann
• Gregory Nisbet
• Jacob Bass
• Jacques-Pascal Deplaix
• Jah Rehders
• Jason Staten
• Jochen Bartl
• Jordan Walke
• Keigo Imai
• Leandro Ostera
• Leo White
• Madroach
• Malcolm Matalka
• Marc Weber
• Mario Rodas
• Markus Mottl
• Nick Borden
• Olivier Andrieu
• Philipp Haselwarter
• Pierre Chambart
• Raman Varabets
• Raphaël Proust
• Ronan Le Hy (2)
• Rudi Grinberg
• Steve Purcell
• Syohei Yoshida
• "tddsg"
• Tomasz Kołodziejski
• Velichko Vsevolod
• Vincent / Twinside
• Xavier Guérin
• Ximin Luo
• Yotam Barnoy

Sponsoring and donations

We would like to thank Jane Street for sponsoring and OCaml Labs for providing support and management.

And many thanks to our Bountysource backers.

Other acknowledgements

Distribution and configuration:

• Louis Gesbert, opam-user-setup, out-of-the-box setup for Vim and Emacs
• Edgar Aroutinian, ocaml-starterkit, collection of tools for beginners in OCaml

Support for other editors:

• Hackwaly, Visual Studio Code
• Luc Rocher, Sublime Text 3
• Pieter Goetschalckx, ocaml-merlin package for Atom
• various contributors, nuclide package for Atom