OCaml's Wings for Machine Learning
Raven is a comprehensive ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools that brings machine learning and data science capabilities to OCaml.
Raven aims to make training models, running data science tasks, and building pipelines in OCaml as efficient and intuitive as Python, while leveraging OCaml's inherent type safety and performance advantages. We prioritize developer experience and seamless integration.
Raven is currently in pre-alpha and we're seeking user feedback:
- Ndarray and Hugin: Scope is feature-complete for the first alpha release, though feedback may influence refinements.
- Rune: Proof-of-concept stage.
- Quill: Early prototyping phase.
Raven is a constellation of sub-projects, each addressing a specific aspect of the machine learning and data science workflow:
- Ndarray: The core of Raven, providing high-performance numerical computation with multi-device support (CPU, GPU), similar to NumPy but with OCaml's type safety.
- Ndarray-CV: A collection of computer vision utilities built on top of Ndarray.
- Ndarray-IO: A library for reading and writing Ndarray data in various formats.
- Ndarray-Datasets: Easy access to popular machine learning and data. science datasets as Ndarrays.
- Quill: An interactive notebook application for data exploration, prototyping, and knowledge sharing.
- Hugin: A visualization library that produces publication-quality plots and charts.
- Rune: A library for automatic differentiation and JIT compilation, inspired by JAX.
- (More to come!): Raven is an evolving ecosystem, and we have exciting plans for additional libraries and tools to make OCaml a premier choice for machine learning and data science.
The table below compares Python's popular data science libraries with their Raven counterparts. For detailed code examples, see the linked documentation files.
| Task | Python Ecosystem | Raven Ecosystem | Comparison Guide | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Numerical Computing | NumPy | Ndarray | Comparison Guide | Examples |
| Visualization | Matplotlib, Seaborn | Hugin | Comparison Guide | Examples |
| Notebooks | Jupyter | Quill | N/A | N/A |
| Automatic Differentiation | JAX | Rune | In progress | In progress |
| Dataframe Manipulation | Pandas | Not yet | N/A | N/A |
| Deep Learning | Pytorch, Tensorflow | Not yet | N/A | N/A |
We welcome contributions from everyone—whether you're an OCaml expert, a data scientist, or simply curious about the project:
- Report issues for bugs or feature requests
- Submit pull requests for code improvements, documentation, or examples
See our CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed guidelines.
Raven is available under the ISC License, making it free for both personal and commercial use.