mldonkey on ocaml 5, dune and static builds

[carlonluca]

Hello,
I took some time to update mldonkey code in my fork here: https://github.com/carlonluca/mldonkey. These are the most relevant changes:

• ported project to the dune build system.
• Patched code to build with ocaml 5.
• Patched code to build with gcc 15.
• Externalized (and updated) some dependencies to opam (xml-light, curl, camlp-streams, num, syslog).
• Added a dune profile to build fully static executables of mldonkey with zero dependencies.
• Fixed some warnings and improved some portions of the code.
• Fixed/updated the CI scripts and added static builds.

There are significant changes and regressions are likely to appear. Only Linux is supported and some features may be missing from the stable version. For those of you wanting to try the new version, please let me know.

For more info: https://bugfreeblog.duckdns.org/2025/08/mldonkey-ocaml5.html.
If you do not want to build mldonkey yourself you may try static builds from GitHub or the docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/carlonluca/mldonkey (use the ocaml5 tag). This docker image runs mldonkey built with ocaml 5 and gcc 15 on Ubuntu Plucky.

Regards.

[perfect7gentleman]

Trying to build your mldonkey.
Could you explain why now for building daemon libX11 libXft are needed? Why do we need ml-graphics for daemon?

[perfect7gentleman]

make: *** No rule to make target 'tools/ocamlpp.ml', needed by 'tools/ocamlpp.cmo'.  Stop.

build..log - https://bpa.st/CP7Q

[perfect7gentleman]

or

config.status: error: cannot find input file: '../src/daemon/driver/driverGraphics.ml.in'

build.log - https://bpa.st/LMIQ

[carlonluca]

Is this an output from a configure script? The ocaml5 branch does not use configure+make but dune.

[perfect7gentleman]

Is this an output from a configure script?

yes

The ocaml5 branch does not use configure+make but dune.

okay

[carlonluca]

In the provided link you have notes on building: https://bugfreeblog.duckdns.org/2025/08/mldonkey-ocaml5.html.