Dear OCaml users,

Four months after the release of OCaml 5.2.0, the set of new features for the
future version 5.3.0 of OCaml has been frozen. We are thus happy to announce the
first alpha release for OCaml 5.3.0.

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 whole release process is available
in the compiler repository at https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/release-info/introduction.md.


The progresses on stabilising the ecosystem are tracked on the

opam readiness for 5.3.0 meta-issue at https://github.com/ocaml/opam-repository/issues/26596.

The full release is expected around November. There are more information available in the new 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 5.3.0 is available on GitHub at

  https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/5.3/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 5.3.0~alpha1


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

* GitHub: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/archive/5.3.0-alpha1.tar.gz
* OCaml archives at Inria: https://caml.inria.fr/pub/distrib/ocaml-5.3/ocaml-5.3.0~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.5.3.0~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 5.3.0~alpha1+flambda+nffa ocaml-variants.5.3.0~alpha1+options ocaml-option-flambda ocaml-option-no-flat-float-array


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