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Coq Installation Advice

Note Coq and its standard library evolve with each release. The files in this repo have been tested against Coq 8.13.2, 8.14.1, and 8.15.2. YMMV with older or newer versions.

There are three main possibilities I suggest for installation:

  • Use the Coq Scratchpad in your browser.

  • Install Coq locally with Coq Platform, and use CoqIDE as your IDE.

  • [more expertise required] Install Coq through OPAM, the OCaml Package Manager, and install either VS Code or Emacs as an IDE.

Below I provide advice about each of those possibilities.

Coq Scratchpad

The easiest way to install Coq is to avoid installing it altogether! The jsCoq project makes it possible run Coq entirely in your browser. For at least the first chapter of the textbook, that's probably good enough. If you're hooked after that, I recommend a local installation.

Coq Platform

The primary way to install Coq locally is with the Coq Platform distribution. It provides installation instructions for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Coq through OPAM

You might choose this option if you prefer to develop software from the terminal with your choice of editor, such as VS Code or Emacs. Or, if you are already an OCaml developer, you might prefer to use OPAM anyway. (Actually, Coq Platform itself uses OPAM under the hood.)

Step 1A. If you have NOT previously installed OPAM: Follow the OPAM install instructions.

Then initialize OPAM:

$ opam init

Now skip to Step 2.

Step 1B. If you HAVE previously installed OPAM: Take a moment to update its package repository:

$ opam update

When the update is done, it might prompt you to upgrade. It's up to you whether you want to upgrade the packages in your current switch. We're instead going to create a separate switch, next.

Step 2. Create a switch for Software Foundations: Run the following commands. See the notes below them for some hints about troubleshooting and options.

$ opam switch create coq-sf ocaml-base-compiler.4.14.0
$ opam install utop
$ opam pin add coq 8.15.2

Notes:

  • Pinning v8.15.2, as the last command above does, will ensure that OPAM does not try to upgrade it to a higher (possibly incompatible) version later.

  • By create a new switch, we ensure Coq doesn't interfere with any other OCaml development you might do or have done in the past.

  • Feel free to pick a different compiler version than 4.14.0. At the time of writing these notes, that was simply the most recent version.

  • Feel free to pick a different switch name than coq-sf.

  • If the pin command gives you an error because you are missing a library, install that library with your Unix package manager. The usual culprit seems to be the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic library.

Step 3. Check that Coq is working. The Coq toplevel is coqtop. Here is a sample interaction:

$ coqtop
Welcome to Coq 8.15.2

Coq < Check true.
true
        : bool

Coq < Quit.

Next you need to install an IDE. There are two main options: VS Code and Proof General.

Step 4A. Install VS Code.

(Or skip to step 4B.)

Install Visual Studio Code, then install the VSCoq extension by Maxime Dénès. Optionally you can also install the Prettify Symbols Mode extension by siegebell.

Warning: When you edit Coq source files with VS Code, you should make sure that you open the directory the file is in, rather than opening the file itself. For example, if foo.v is a file in the current working directory, open it with code . not code foo.v. This is necessary to make sure that other files in the same directory can be imported by foo.

Step 4B. Install Proof General.

Proof General is a plugin for Emacs. Note that you can use Evil mode to get Vim keybindings, if you prefer those.

  • Install Emacs. If you're new to Emacs, start by doing the built-in tutorial with C-h t. That is, Control-h followed by t. It will take maybe an hour.

  • Install Proof General and Company Coq (which is an extension of Proof General for Coq) by following these instructions. The Company Coq tutorial, mentioned at the end of those instructions, might not make much sense yet. It assumes you know Coq already.

  • You can double check that Proof General is working correctly as follows. Visit a new Coq file in Emacs with C-x C-f test.v. Enter this code: Check true. Press C-c C-n to compile it. You should get the output true : bool in the Coq Response window. In a correctly configured GUI Emacs you will see 𝔹 instead of bool.