OPAM-SOURCE(1)

📦
version 2.6.1 · 8 versions
, in arch rolling, fedora 44

💖 OPAM-SOURCE(1) — opam-source 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the opam-source page, straight outta the Opam Manual. this is the one that goes and gets you the source. let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

opam-source — Get the source of an opam package. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

opam source [OPTION]… PACKAGE

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So like, what does it actually do? It downloads the source for a given package into a local directory. that's it, that's the whole vibe. you'd do this for development, for bug fixing, or for documentation purposes. local source on your machine, yours to poke at ✨

💅 ARGUMENTS 💅

  • PACKAGE (required, no cap, you literally cannot skip it) — a package name, and you can tack an optional version constraint on there. 🍓

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • --dev-repo — grab the latest version-controlled source instead of the release archive. iykyk, sometimes you want the live repo, not the packaged drop.
  • --dir=DIR — the directory where the source should get put. your call, bestie. 📁
  • --no-checksums — do not verify the checksum of downloaded archives. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMNOCHECKSUMS to "true". (yes that's the same as the env var, pick your fighter)
  • --no-switch — choose the package without any consideration for the current switch (or any other switch for that matter) — no installed packages, no pinned packages, none of it. just the package, raw. ✨
  • --pin — pin the package to the downloaded source. see opam pin for the whole story. 📌
  • --require-checksums — reject installation of packages that don't provide a checksum for the upstream archives. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMREQUIRECHECKSUMS to "true". strict queen behavior 👑

🌈 COMMON OPTIONS 🌈

these ones are common to all commands, so they show up everywhere like that one friend in every group photo. 💖

  • --best-effort — don't fail if all the requested packages can't be installed; just try to install as many as possible. heads up tho: not all external solvers may support this option (recent versions of aspcud or mccs should). this is equivalent to setting the $OPAMBESTEFFORT environment variable.
  • --cli=MAJOR.MINOR (absent=2.6) — use the command-line interface syntax and semantics of MAJOR.MINOR. it's intended for any persistent use of opam (scripts, blog posts, all of it), and any version of opam in the same MAJOR series will behave as for the specified MINOR release. fun fact: this flag was not available in opam 2.0, so if you wanna select the 2.0 CLI you have to set the OPAMCLI environment variable to 2.0 instead of using this parameter.
  • --color=WHEN — colorize the output. WHEN must be one of always, never or auto. 🌈
  • --confirm-level=LEVEL — confirmation level. LEVEL must be one of ask, no, yes or unsafe-yes. you can specify this more than once. if --yes or --no are also given, the value of the last --confirm-level is what counts. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMCONFIRMLEVEL.
  • --criteria=CRITERIA — specify user preferences for dependency solving for this run. it overrides $OPAMCRITERIA, $OPAMFIXUPCRITERIA and $OPAMUPGRADECRITERIA. for details on the supported language and the external solvers available, see http://opam.ocaml.org/doc/External_solvers.html. a general guide to using solver preferences lives at http://www.dicosmo.org/Articles/usercriteria.pdf.
  • --cudf=FILENAME — debug option, bb: save the CUDF requests sent to the solver to FILENAME-<n>.cudf, where <n> is the n-th call to the solver during the opam run. 🧚
  • --debug — print debug messages to stderr. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMDEBUG to "true".
  • --debug-level=LEVEL — like --debug, but you get to pick the debug level (--debug just sets it to 1). equivalent to setting $OPAMDEBUG to a positive integer.
  • --git-version — print the git version of opam, if it's set (i.e. you're running a development version), and exit. 💀
  • --help[=FMT] (default=auto) — show this help in format FMT. FMT must be one of auto, pager, groff or plain. with auto, the format is pager or plain whenever the TERM env var is dumb or undefined.
  • --ignore-pin-depends — ignore extra pins required by packages that get pinned, whether manually through opam pin or through opam install DIR. this is equivalent to setting IGNOREPINDEPENDS=true.
  • --json=FILENAME — save the results of the opam run into a computer-readable file. if the filename contains the character %, it gets replaced by an index that doesn't overwrite an existing file. similar to setting the $OPAMJSON variable.
  • --no — answer no to all opam yes/no questions without prompting. see also --confirm-level. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMNO to "true".
  • --no-aspcud — Removed in 2.1. rip, she's gone 🙈
  • --no-auto-upgrade — when configuring or updating a repository that's written for an earlier opam version (1.2), opam internally converts it to the current format. this disables that behaviour. note that repositories should define their format version in a 'repo' file at their root, or they'll be assumed to be in the older format. it's preferable in any case to upgrade the repositories manually using opam admin upgrade [--mirror URL] when possible.
  • --no-self-upgrade — opam will replace itself with a newer binary found at OPAMROOT/opam if present. this disables that behaviour. (no glow-up today 💅)
  • -q, --quiet — disables --verbose.
  • --root=ROOT — use ROOT as the current root path. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMROOT to ROOT.
  • --safe, --readonly — make sure nothing gets automatically updated or rewritten. super useful for calling from completion scripts, for example. it will fail whenever such an operation is needed; it also avoids waiting for locks, skips interactive questions, and overrides the $OPAMDEBUG variable. this is equivalent to setting the $OPAMSAFE environment variable.
  • --solver=CMD — specify the CUDF solver to use for resolving package installation problems. this is either a predefined solver (this version of opam supports builtin-mccs+lp(), builtin-mccs+glpk, builtin-dummy-z3-solver, builtin-0install, aspcud, mccs, aspcud-old, packup) or a custom command that should contain the variables %{input}%, %{output}%, %{criteria}%, and optionally %{timeout}%. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMEXTERNALSOLVER.
  • --strict — fail whenever an error is found in a package definition or a configuration file. the default is to continue silently if possible. 😌
  • --switch=SWITCH — use SWITCH as the current compiler switch. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMSWITCH to SWITCH.
  • --use-internal-solver — disable any external solver and use the built-in one (this requires that opam has been compiled with a built-in solver). this is equivalent to setting $OPAMNOASPCUD or $OPAMUSEINTERNALSOLVER.
  • -v, --verbose — be more verbose. one -v shows all package commands; repeat it to also display commands called internally (e.g. tar, curl, patch, etc.). repeating n times is equivalent to setting $OPAMVERBOSE to "n". 🗣️
  • --version — show version information.
  • -w, --working-dir — whenever updating packages that are bound to a local, version-controlled directory, update to the current working state of their source instead of the last committed state, or the ref they're pointing to. since the source directory is copied as it is, if it isn't clean it may result in an opam build failure. ⚠️ this only affects packages explicitly listed on the command-line. it can also be set with $OPAMWORKINGDIR.
  • -y, --yes — answer yes to all opam yes/no questions without prompting. see also --confirm-level. this is equivalent to setting $OPAMYES to "true".

lowkey that's a lot of flags, but you ate that. 🍽️✨ more parts coming, bestie — don't go anywhere 💖

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

okay bestie so opam reads a whole bunch of environment variables and honestly they're kind of the cheat codes of the whole thing 💖 Here's the roster. One thing though — if a variable is a boolean, you turn it OFF with "0", "no", "false", or just an empty string, and you turn it ON with "1", "yes", or "true". No in-between, it's giving binary, periodt.

  • OPAMALLPARENS — surround all filters with parenthesis. yeah, all of them 💅
  • OPAMASSUMEDEPEXTS — see option `--assume-depexts'.
  • OPAMAUTOANSWER — internal use only. don't touch, she's not for you 🙈
  • OPAMAUTOREMOVE — see remove option `--auto-remove'.
  • OPAMBESTEFFORT — see option `--best-effort'.
  • OPAMBESTEFFORTPREFIXCRITERIA — sets the string that must be prepended to the criteria when the --best-effort' option is set, and is expected to maximise the opam-query' property in the solution. lowkey a mouthful but she's doing her best 🫶
  • OPAMBUILDDOC — Removed in 2.1. gone, deceased, no longer with us 💀
  • OPAMBUILDTEST — Removed in 2.1. same vibe, also gone.
  • OPAMCLI — see option `--cli'.
  • OPAMCOLOR — when set to always or never, sets a default value for the `--color' option.
  • OPAMCONFIRMLEVEL — see option --confirm-level. and bestie, listen: OPAMCONFIRMLEVEL has priority over OPAMYES and OPAMNO. she's the main character here 👑
  • OPAMCRITERIA — specifies user preferences for dependency solving. The default value depends on the solver version, use config report' to know the current setting. See also option --criteria'.
  • OPAMCUDFFILE — save the cudf graph to file-actions-explicit.dot.
  • OPAMCUDFTRIM — controls the filtering of unrelated packages during CUDF preprocessing.
  • OPAMCURL — can be used to select a given 'curl' program. See OPAMFETCH for more options.
  • OPAMDEBUG — see options --debug' and --debug-level'.
  • OPAMDEBUGSECTIONS — if set, limits debug messages to the space-separated list of sections. Sections can optionally have a specific debug level (for example, CLIENT:2 or CLIENT CUDF:2), but otherwise use `--debug-level'.
  • OPAMDIGDEPTH — defines how aggressive the lookup for conflicts during CUDF preprocessing is. she digs deep, fr fr ⛏️
  • OPAMDOWNLOADJOBS — sets the maximum number of simultaneous downloads.
  • OPAMDROPWORKINGDIR — overrides packages previously updated with --working-dir on update. Without this variable set, opam would keep them unchanged unless explicitly named on the command-line.
  • OPAMDRYRUN — see option `--dry-run'.
  • OPAMEDITOR — sets the editor to use for opam file editing, overrides $EDITOR and $VISUAL.
  • OPAMERRLOGLEN — sets the number of log lines printed when a sub-process fails. 0 to print all.
  • OPAMEXTERNALSOLVER — see option `--solver'.
  • OPAMFAKE — see option `--fake'.
  • OPAMFETCH — specifies how to download files: either wget', curl' or a custom command where variables %{url}%, %{out}%, %{retry}%, %{compress}% and %{checksum}% will be replaced. Overrides the 'download-command' value from the main config file.
  • OPAMFIXUPCRITERIA — same as OPAMUPGRADECRITERIA, but specific to fixup and reinstall.
  • OPAMIGNOREAVAILABLE — see install option `--ignore-available-on'.
  • OPAMIGNORECONSTRAINTS — see install option `--ignore-constraints-on'.
  • OPAMIGNOREPINDEPENDS — see option `--ignore-pin-depends'.
  • OPAMINPLACEBUILD — see option `--inplace-build'.
  • OPAMJOBS — sets the maximum number of parallel workers to run. more jobs = more slay 🔥
  • OPAMJSON — log json output to the given file (use character % to index the files).
  • OPAMKEEPBUILDDIR — see install option `--keep-build-dir'.
  • OPAMKEEPLOGS — tells opam to not remove some temporary command logs and some backups. This skips some finalisers and may also help to get more reliable backtraces.
  • OPAMLOCKED — combination of --locked and --lock-suffix options.
  • OPAMLOGS — logdir sets log directory, default is a temporary directory in /tmp
  • OPAMMAKECMD — set the system make command to use.
  • OPAMMERGEOUT — merge process outputs, stderr on stdout.
  • OPAMNO — answer no to any question asked, see options --no and --confirm-level. and heads up: OPAMNO is ignored if either OPAMCONFIRMLEVEL or OPAMYES is set. it's giving "she said no but nobody heard her" 😭
  • OPAMNOAGGREGATE — with opam admin check, don't aggregate packages.
  • OPAMNOASPCUD — Deprecated. we don't stan her anymore, move on 🙈
  • OPAMNOAUTOUPGRADE — disables automatic internal upgrade of repositories in an earlier format to the current one, on 'update' or 'init'.
  • OPAMNOCHECKSUMS — enables option --no-checksums when available.
  • OPAMNODEPEXTS — disables system dependencies handling, see option `--no-depexts'.
  • OPAMNOENVNOTICE — Internal.
  • OPAMNOSELFUPGRADE — see option --no-self-upgrade
  • OPAMPINKINDAUTO — sets whether version control systems should be detected when pinning to a local path. Enabled by default since 1.3.0.
  • OPAMPRECISETRACKING — fine grain tracking of directories.
  • OPAMPREPRO — set this to false to disable CUDF preprocessing. Less efficient, but might help debugging solver issue.
  • OPAMREPOSITORYTARRING — internally store all non-vcs repositories as tar.gz files (by default, http repositories are stored as archive). This can be much faster on filesystems that don't cope well with scanning large trees. All operation are done in-memory, no I/O for scanning the repository.
  • OPAMREQUIRECHECKSUMS — Enables option --require-checksums' when available (e.g. for `opam install').
  • OPAMRETRIES — sets the number of tries before failing downloads.
  • OPAMREUSEBUILDDIR — see option `--reuse-build-dir'.
  • OPAMROOT — see option --root'. This is automatically set by opam env --root=DIR --set-root'.
  • OPAMROOTISOK — don't complain when running as root.
  • OPAMSAFE — see option `--safe'.
  • OPAMSHOW — see option `--show'.
  • OPAMSKIPUPDATE — see option `--skip-updates'.
  • OPAMSKIPVERSIONCHECKS — bypasses some version checks. Unsafe, for compatibility testing only. like. do not. 🚨
  • OPAMSOLVERALLOWSUBOPTIMAL — (default true') allows some solvers to still return a solution when they reach timeout; while the solution remains assured to be consistent, there is no guarantee in this case that it fits the expected optimisation criteria. If true, opam willcontinue with a warning, if falsea timeout is an error. Currently only thebuiltin-z3` backend handles this degraded case.
  • OPAMSOLVERTIMEOUT — change the time allowance of the solver. Default is 60.0, set to 0 for unlimited. Note that all solvers may not support this option.
  • OPAMSOLVERTOLERANCE — changes the tolerance towards the solver choosing an unoptimized solution (i.e. might pull outdated packages). Typical values range from 0.0 (best solution known to the solver) to 1.0 (unoptimized solution). Default is 0.0. This option is useful in case the solver can't find a solution in a reasonable time (see $OPAMSOLVERTIMEOUT). Note that all solvers may not support this option.
  • OPAMSTATS — Removed in 2.4. 💀
  • OPAMSTATUSLINE — display a dynamic status line showing what's currently going on on the terminal. (one of one of always, never or auto) — yes bestie, "one of" really is written twice, it's iconic actually, we keep it 🌈
  • OPAMSTRICT — fail on inconsistencies (file reading, switch import, etc.).
  • OPAMSWITCH — see option --switch'. Automatically set by opam env --switch=SWITCH --set-switch'.
  • OPAMUNLOCKBASE — see install option `--unlock-base'.
  • OPAMUPGRADECRITERIA — specifies user preferences for dependency solving when performing an upgrade. Overrides OPAMCRITERIA in upgrades if both are set. See also option `--criteria'.
  • OPAMUSEINTERNALSOLVER — see option `--use-internal-solver'.
  • OPAMUSEOPENSSL — Removed in 2.2.
  • OPAMUTF8 — use UTF8 characters in output (one of one of always, never or auto). By default auto, which is determined from the locale). (yep, the double "one of" is back, we love consistency 🎀)
  • OPAMUTF8MSGS — use extended UTF8 characters (camels 🐪) in opam messages. Implies OPAMUTF8. This is set by default on macOS only.
  • OPAMVALIDATIONHOOK — if set, uses the %{hook}%' command to validate an opam repository update.
  • OPAMVERBOSE — see option `--verbose'.
  • OPAMVERBOSEON — see option --verbose-on
  • OPAMVERSIONLAGPOWER — do not use. that's it. that's the whole description. girl is not to be touched 🚫
  • OPAMWITHDEVSETUP — see install option `--with-dev-setup'.
  • OPAMWITHDOC — see install option `--with-doc'.
  • OPAMWITHTEST — see install option --with-test.
  • OPAMWORKINGDIR — see option `--working-dir'.
  • OPAMYES — see options --yes and --confirm-level. OPAMYES has priority over OPAMNO and is ignored if OPAMCONFIRMLEVEL is set.
  • OPAMVAR_var — overrides the contents of the variable var when substituting %{var}% strings in opam files.
  • OPAMVAR_package_var — overrides the contents of the variable package:var when substituting %{package:var}% strings in opam files.

🎀 CLI VERSION 🎀

okay so this part is important, bestie, listen up 👑

All scripts and programmatic invocations of opam should use --cli in order to ensure that they work seamlessly with future versions of the opam client. Plus, blog posts or other documentation can benefit, as it prevents information from becoming stale. no cap, futureproofing is the vibe 🦋

Although opam only supports roots (~/.opam/) for the current version, it does provide backwards compatibility for its command-line interface.

Since CLI version support was only added in opam 2.1, use OPAMCLI to select 2.0 support (as opam 2.0 will just ignore it), and --cli=2.1 for 2.1 (or later) versions, since an environment variable controlling the parsing of syntax is brittle. To this end, opam displays a warning if OPAMCLI specifies a valid version other than 2.0, and also if --cli=2.0 is specified. so yeah, she'll absolutely call you out if you're being weird about it 💅

The command-line version is selected by using the --cli option or the OPAMCLI environment variable. --cli may be specified morethan once, where the last instance takes precedence. OPAMCLI is only inspected if --cli is not given. so like, --cli walks in first and OPAMCLI just sits there quietly being the backup dancer 💖

💖 EXIT STATUS 💖

okay bestie listen up, because this is the part where opam tells you exactly how it's feeling when it walks out the door 🚪✨ Every number here is a whole mood, and you gotta know them all.

⚠️ Exception alert!! As an exception to everything listed below, the exec command returns 127 if the command was not found or couldn't be executed, and returns the command's own exit value otherwise. That's it, that's the exception. 🫶
  • 0 — Success ✨ or true for boolean queries. We love a happy ending.
  • 1 — False. This is what you get when a boolean return value is expected, like when you're running with --check, or for queries like opam lint.
  • 2 — Bad command-line arguments 💀 or command-line arguments pointing to an invalid context (e.g. a file that doesn't follow the expected format).
  • 5 — Not found. You asked for something (package, version, repository, etc.) that just… could not be found 😭.
  • 10 — Aborted. The operation needed confirmation and you ✨did not✨ give it.
  • 15 — Could not acquire the locks required for the operation 🔒.
  • 20 — There is no solution to the user request. This can be caused by asking to install two incompatible packages, for example. (enemies to lovers but make it dependency resolution 💔)
  • 30 — Error in package definition, or other metadata files. Heads up: using --strict raises this error more often.
  • 31 — Package script error. Some package operations were unsuccessful. This may be an error in the packages or an incompatibility with your system. This can be a partial error.
  • 40 — Sync error. Could not fetch some remotes from the network 🌐. This can be a partial error.
  • 50 — Configuration error. Opam or system configuration doesn't allow the operation, and needs fixing 🛠️.
  • 60 — Solver failure. The solver failed to return a sound answer. It can be due to a broken external solver, or an error in solver configuration 🧩.
  • 99 — Internal error. Something went wrong, likely due to a bug in opam itself 🐛 (not you, bestie, it's not your fault).
  • 130 — User interrupt. SIGINT was received, generally due to the user pressing Ctrl+C 🫣.

and then there's this little cluster of codes, also on the list:

  • 0 — on success.
  • 123 — on indiscriminate errors reported on standard error.
  • 124 — on command line parsing errors.
  • 125 — on unexpected internal errors (bugs).

📚 FURTHER DOCUMENTATION 📚

Need even more lore? The docs live at https://opam.ocaml.org/doc 🦋

👑 AUTHORS 👑

The absolute icons who built this. Show some respect, they ate 💅✨

  • David Allsopp <david@tarides.com>
  • Vincent Bernardoff <vb@luminar.eu.org>
  • Raja Boujbel <raja.boujbel@ocamlpro.com>
  • Kate Deplaix <kit-ty-kate@exn.st>
  • Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto@dicosmo.org>
  • Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@gazagnaire.org>
  • Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert@ocamlpro.com>
  • Fabrice Le Fessant <Fabrice.Le_fessant@inria.fr>
  • Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org>
  • Guillem Rieu <guillem.rieu@ocamlpro.com>
  • Ralf Treinen <ralf.treinen@pps.jussieu.fr>
  • Frederic Tuong <tuong@users.gforge.inria.fr>

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

  • opam(1) — yeah, the main character. Go read it. iykyk 😌

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Found something cursed? Check bug reports at https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues 💀 We love a good issue thread fr fr.

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 This one came from Opam 2.6.1, filed as OPAM-SOURCE(1) — the date line got cut off in the original, so just know it's the version on the tin ✨ Go forth and opam source something iconic 🌸🫶💜

📦 where this page comes from