Windows Administrator Installation

The Diskuv OCaml distribution includes a setup-machine.ps1 PowerShell script that will ask for elevated Administrator permissions to install the Microsoft C compiler (the “MSBuild” components of Visual Studio). As an Administrator you can run the following commands in PowerShell with Run as Administrator, and the non-Administrator users on your PCs will be able to read and complete the same Diskuv OCaml instructions as everybody else.

PS> installtime\windows\setup-machine.bat -AllowRunAsAdmin

Note

You can use the -SilentInstall switch if you need to automate the installation.

The Administrator portion takes 2GB of disk space while each user can take up to 25GB of disk space in their User Profiles ($env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\DiskuvOCaml and $env:LOCALAPPDATA\opam) just for the basic Diskuv OCaml distribution. Please plan accordingly.

Using an existing Visual Studio Installation

If you have all four (4) of the following:

  1. Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 or later for any of the following products:

    • Visual Studio Community

    • Visual Studio Professional

    • Visual Studio Enterprise

    • Visual Studio Build Tools (the compilers without the IDE)

  2. If and only if you are using vcpkg (the C package manager) either because you are using DKSDK or because you used the installtime\windows\setup-machine.bat -VcpkgCompatibility option, you will need the English language pack.

    Most open-source users of DKML will not need the English language pack.

  3. Both of the following:

    • MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.26) (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.14.26.x86.x64) which is used by OCaml to compile C code

    • MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (Latest) (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64) which is used by vcpkg to compile C code

    Note

    vcpkg does not have the ability pick a precise version (ex. 14.26) of Visual Studio. If you are in the rare situation where you must have exact matching versions of the compiler, you can install Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 which can be downloaded at Visual Studio 2019 Releases. Use the VS2019 16.6 installer to install “MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (Latest)”. Then you won’t need to install “MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.26)”.

  4. Windows 10 SDK 18362 (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.18362) which is also known as the 19H1 SDK or May 2019 Update SDK.

then the Diskuv OCaml distribution will not automatically try to install its own Visual Studio Build Tools. That means when your users run setup-machine.ps1 they will not need Administrator privileges.

Note

If you use Chocolatey to manage Windows software on your machines or in your CI build, then one of the following code blocks will satisfy all the requirements:

# Any 16.6.x.x will work. This code block is recommended if you do not already install Visual Studio on your machines
choco install visualstudio2019buildtools --version=16.6.5.0 --package-parameters "--addProductLang en-US --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.18362"

# This will also work, and is recommended if you already install the latest Visual Studio 2019
choco install visualstudio2019buildtools
choco install visualstudio2019-workload-vctools --package-parameters "--addProductLang en-US --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.14.26.x86.x64"

# This will also work, and is recommended if you already install the latest Visual Studio 2017
choco install visualstudio2017buildtools
choco install visualstudio2017-workload-vctools --package-parameters "--addProductLang en-US --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.14.26.x86.x64"

# This will also work with any 16.6.x.x version, although it will install more packages than are strictly required.
# This code block is not recommended, although GitLab CI, as of September 2021, already includes the first line in its shared GitLab Windows Runners.
# But the shared GitLab CI may update the version at any time.
choco install visualstudio2019buildtools --version=16.6.5.0
choco install visualstudio2019-workload-vctools

The following installers allow you to add several optional components including the correct Windows 10 SDK:

Note

It is common to have multiple versions of Windows 10 SDK installed. Don’t be afraid to install the older Windows 10 SDK 18362.

After you have installed all the required components of Visual Studio, you can run setup-machine.ps1 with the switch -SkipAutoInstallVsBuildTools to verify you have a correct Visual Studio installation:

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy `
    -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted `
    -Scope Process `
    -Force

PS> installtime\windows\setup-machine.ps1 -SkipAutoInstallVsBuildTools

The setup-machine.ps1 script will error out if you are missing any required components.