Two months after the release of OCaml 5.1.1, the set of new features f= or the
future version 5.2.0 of OCaml has been frozen. We are thus happy to announc= e the
first alpha release for OCaml 5.2.0.

This alpha version is here to help fellow hackers join us early in our bug<= br> hunting and opam ecosystem fixing fun (see below for the installation
instructions). More information about the whole release process is now avai= lable
in the compiler repository at https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/release-info/introduction.md,=

and we will try to propagate this information to ocaml.org shortly.

The progresses on stabilising the ecosystem are tracked on the opam readine= ss
for 5.2.0 meta-issue at https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues/251= 82.

The full release is expected around April.

If you find any bugs, please report them on OCaml's issue
tracker (https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/issues).

If you are interested in the ongoing list of new features and bug fixes, th= e
updated change log for OCaml 5.2.0 is available on
GitHub at https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/5.2/Changes.

Installation Instructions
-------------------------------

The base compiler can be installed as an opam switch with the following com= mands
on opam 2.1 and later:

     opam update
     opam switch create 5.2.0~alpha1

For previous version of opam, the switch creation command line is slightly = more
verbose:

    opam update
    opam switch create 5.2.0~alpha1 --repositories=3Ddefault= ,beta=3Dgit+https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-beta-repository.git

The source code for the alpha is also available at these addresses:

* GitHub: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/archive/5.2.0-alpha1.tar.gz
* OCaml archives at Inria: https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-5.2/ocam= l-5.2.0~alpha1.tar.gz

Fine-Tuned Compiler Configuration
-----------------------------------------------

If you want to tweak the configuration of the compiler, you can switch to t= he
option variant with:

    opam update
    opam switch create <switch_name> ocaml-variants.5.= 2.0~alpha1+options <option_list>

where `option_list` is a space separated list of `ocaml-option-*` packages.= For
instance, for a flambda and no-flat-float-array switch:

    opam switch create 5.2.0~alpha1+flambda+nffa oca= ml-variants.5.2.0~alpha1+options ocaml-option-flambda ocaml-option-no-f= lat-float-array

The command line above is slightly more complicated for opam version anteri= or to
2.1:

    opam update
    opam switch create <switch_name> --packages=3Docam= l-variants.5.2.0~alpha1+options,<option_list> --repositories=3Dde= fault,beta=3Dgit+https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-beta-repository.git

In both cases, all available options can be listed with `opam search ocaml-= option`.