Bonsai Term

Bonsai_term is a library that lets you write Terminal UIs (TUIs) using OCaml. It uses the same programming model as the bonsai_web library.

bonsai_term is released across 4 repositories:

• bonsai_term: The "core" bonsai term library.
• bonsai_term_examples: Some bonsai_term examples.
• bonsai_term_components: Some re-usable bonsai term components.
• bonsai_term_test: For writing bonsai term tests.

Demos

Here are some of our demos. The source code for these (and others) is located in our examples repo.

Getting started

1. If you are new to OCaml - or if you haven't already - install opam. It is OCaml's package manager and we'll be using it to install bonsai_term and its dependencies. The specific installation instructions depend on your platform. You can find platform-specific instructions here.
2. bonsai_term uses OxCaml so the next thing you'll want to do is install oxcaml by following the instructions here.
3. Run opam install bonsai_term. (This will install bonsai_term and its dependencies).

At this point you should now have bonsai_term "installed".

To learn how to use bonsai_term you can read its MLI src/bonsai_term.mli and / or look at some examples in the bonsai_term_examples repo.

To learn how to use bonsai, you can read the docs in bonsai_web. (most of those docs are aimed at the "web" version of bonsai, so the "vdom" bits may not apply, but the "effect" / "state-fulness" and ways of doing "incrementality" all should transfer from bonsai_web into bonsai_term).

To learn how to use ocaml here are some good resources:

• Learn OCaml documentation
• CS 3110 Course
• Real World OCaml

If you followed the install instructions at the top of this page, you can skip the "Install" instructions on the above links.