package hegel

Hegel for OCaml

Hegel is a property-based testing library for OCaml based on Hypothesis, and runs the native Hegel engine in-process via the libhegel C library.

Install Hegel

opam install hegel

The Hegel version in opam sometimes lags behind the version in Github. To pin the version in Github:

opam pin add hegel "git+https://github.com/hegeldev/hegel-ocaml.git"

Hegel calls the native libhegel shared library and locates it automatically at runtime — no separate install step. It looks, in order, for:

1. $HEGEL_LIBHEGEL_PATH — an explicit path to the library (or a directory containing it);
2. a sibling hegel-rust checkout at ../hegel-rust/target/release/ (then .../debug/) relative to your project;
3. a checksum-verified download of the matching version from hegel-rust's GitHub releases, cached under ~/.cache/hegel-ocaml/libhegel/<version>/.

Set HEGEL_LIBHEGEL_NO_DOWNLOAD=1 to opt out of the download fallback.

Hegel for OCaml supports Linux (amd64/arm64) and macOS (Apple Silicon). macOS amd64 (Intel) has no published libhegel artifact, so on that platform point HEGEL_LIBHEGEL_PATH at a locally built libhegel.dylib.

Quick start

Hegel works with whatever test framework your project already uses. The examples below use Alcotest.

Add hegel and alcotest to your dune test stanza:

(test
 (name my_tests)
 (libraries hegel alcotest)
 (preprocess (pps ppx_hegel_test)))

Write a property test using let%hegel_test:

open Hegel

let%hegel_test commutative_addition tc =
  let a = draw tc (Generators.integers ~min_value:(-1000) ~max_value:1000 ()) in
  let b = draw tc (Generators.integers ~min_value:(-1000) ~max_value:1000 ()) in
  assert (a + b = b + a)
;;

let () =
  Alcotest.run
    "my_tests"
    [ "properties", [ Alcotest.test_case "commutative addition" `Quick commutative_addition ] ]
;;

Run dune runtest. Hegel generates up to 100 random input pairs and reports the minimal counterexample if it finds one. When a test fails, Hegel prints a report naming each value you drew from the failing case (a = …, b = …, named after the let binding) and a copy-pasteable line to replay it, and Alcotest reports the test as failed and exits non-zero. For equality checks, require_equal can be used to print a structural diff of the two values instead of a bare assert. See Debugging failures for details.

To override the default settings, attach a [@@settings ...] attribute:

let%hegel_test commutative_addition tc =
  let a = draw tc (Generators.integers ()) in
  let b = draw tc (Generators.integers ()) in
  assert (a + b = b + a)
[@@settings settings ~test_cases:500 ()]
;;

For a full walkthrough, see docs/getting-started.md.

Development

just check       # Full CI: lint + docs + tests with 100% coverage
just test        # Run tests only

libhegel is located (and downloaded + cached if needed) automatically at runtime — there is no separate setup step.