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Would you like to build every package in opam in a single Dockerfile using BuildKit?

Over the last few months, I have written several posts on the package installation graphs specifically, Topological Sort of Packages, Installation order for opam packages and Transitive Reduction of Package Graph. In this post, I’d like to cover a alternative ordering solution.

When I started to play with OCaml I was kind of surprised that there was no id (identity) function that was available out-of-box (in Stdlib module, that’s auto-opened). A quick search lead me to the Fun module, which is part of the standard library and is nested under Stdlib. It was introduced in OCaml 4.08, alongside other modules such as Int, Result and Option.1 It was part of some broader efforts to slim down Stdlib and move in the direction of a more modular standard library. ↩

Today I’m going to cover a very basic topic - conversions between OCaml’s primary numeric types int and float. I guess most of you are wondering if such a basic topic deserves a special treatment, but if you read on I promise that it will be worth it.

Jon asked me to make a Docker image that contains OxCaml ready to run without the need to build it from scratch.

I am grateful for Tarides’ sponsorship of my OCaml work. Below is a summary of my activities in Q2 2025.

```diff @@ -44,6 +44,8 @@ # the lines involved in the conflict, which is arguably worse #/Changes merge=union

Earlier this year, I returned to the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, as part of the Energy and Environment Group, combining with my work at Tarides. It’s been something of a whirlwind, which doesn’t look like it’ll be abating just yet, but there’s still been the odd chance to consider where things are and where we might be headed. I’m minded of a scene from an opera I performed a few years ago in Hannover. In the second act of Henrico Leone (🦁, rather than 🐫, but hey), Henrico’s wife, Metilda, in a vision sees her husband defeated in battle: