Dear OCaml users,

Four months after the release of OCaml 5.4.0, the set of new features for the
future version 5.5.0 of OCaml has been frozen. We are thus happy to announce
the first alpha release for OCaml 5.5.0.

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

The progress on stabilising the ecosystem is tracked on the
"opam readiness for 5.5.0 meta-issue" at

  - https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues/29463

There is also a companion alpha opam repository available for this alpha release

      opam repo add alpha git+https://github.com/kit-ty-kate/opam-alpha-repository.git

which contains in-progress alpha releases of opam packages that are being updated for
OCaml 5.5.0 .

The full release is expected between May and June. There are more information
available in the prospective calendar at

  - https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/release-info/calendar.md .

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, the
updated change log for OCaml 5.5.0 is available on GitHub at

  - https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/5.5/Changes

Happy hacking,
Florian Angeletti for the OCaml team

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

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

    opam update
    opam switch create 5.5.0~alpha1

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

* GitHub: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/archive/5.5.0-alpha1.tar.gz
* OCaml archives at Inria: https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-5.5/ocaml-5.5.0~alpha1.tar.gz

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

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


    opam update
    opam switch create <switch_name> ocaml-variants.5.5.0~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 5.5.0~alpha1+flambda+nffa ocaml-variants.5.5.0~alpha1+options ocaml-option-flambda ocaml-option-no-flat-float-array


All available options can be listed with `opam search ocaml-option`.