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Overview

The Coq proof assistant provides a formal language to write mathematical definitions, executable algorithms, and theorems, together with an environment for semi-interactive development of machine-checked proofs.

The Coq Platform is a distribution of Coq together with a selection of libraries and plugins. The main goal of the Coq Platform is to provide a distribution for developing and teaching with Coq that is:

operating system independent
dependable
easy to install
comprehensive

See the Charter for more on the Platform concept, and CEP 52 for more on how the Platform is related to the Coq release cycle.

The Coq Platform is based on the OCaml package manager opam and provides a set of scripts to compile and/or install opam, Coq and the platform contents on macOS, Windows and many Linux distributions in a reliable way with consistent results. In addition pre-compiled binary packages or installers are provided for macOS and Windows (Docker is in preparation). Note that snap for Linux is no longer supported (the maintenance effort was too high).

The Coq Platform supports installing several versions of Coq - also in parallel, e.g., for porting developments from one version of Coq to another. For the previous release version of Coq, Coq Platform provides extended and updated package picks which are as much as possible compatible to the pick of the latest release version of Coq. For this reason for some Coq versions several different package picks are provided.

The table below contains links to the README files for the supported versions of Coq and libraries. Each README file contains a list of included packages with detailed information for each package.

If you have questions on the Coq Platform, please contact us on zulip chat Coq-Platform & users

Installation

The Coq platform is the recommended way to install Coq for both beginners and experts. Beginners are encouraged to use one of the binary installers. Experienced users are advised to run the scripts provided by the Coq platform to install from sources as this will allow them to install additional packages with opam. Please refer to the ReadMe file for your operating system, which contains information on both methods respectively.

macOS: see README_macOS.
Windows: see README_Windows
Linux: see README_Linux.

Additional information

<details><summary>Licenses</summary>

The Coq Platform setup scripts and the selection of package recipes and patches are licensed Creative Commons CC0. This license does not apply to the packages installed by the Coq Platform. The README files linked above provide license information for each package. This information is also available as .CSV files here doc. Please note that the license information is obtained from opam. The Coq Platform team does no double check this information.

</details> <details><summary>Release notes / changelog</summary>

Changes in 2024.10.0

added new pick 8.19~2024.10
the MacOS installers for Apple silicon (ARM) are now fully supported (no longer experimental)
on Windows enabled long path support by
- using a manifest where this is enabled during build of all executables
- checking in the script if the registry key is set
- Not that this is only required during build - if using an installer the provided binaries still have this enabled in the manifest, but the user is not asked to enable it in the registry
on Windows set the stack size of `ocamlc`` to 64MB (essentially by patching the binary) - this allows to build fiat-crypto
- note that coqc is not pacthed in this way - it can be done if needed. See the folder windows/set_stack_size and the script shell_scripts/install_ocaml_stacksize.sh
- also note that on Windows any stack size can be set in case this should be required (MacOS has a hard limit of 64MB, though (as of macOS Sonoma) so try to avoid this to stay portable)
on Windows re-enables coq-fiat-crypto
- on Windows no packages are excluded any more except for coq-hammer which heavily uses Unix style fork
support for snap has been removed
- there is currently no known method to build snaps in case the build process requires more than 2GB of RAM
- the overall maintenance effort for snap was very high
- we are looking for a replacement - suggestions welcome

Changes in 2023.11.0

when using the build from sources script on Windows the root folders changed to shorten the path length (e.g. coq-serapi had build issues cause by long path names)
- the opam path is now <cygroot>/opam instead of <cygroot>/home/<user>/.opam
- the platform path is now <cygroot>/platform instead of <cygroot>/home/<user>/platform
- the (longest) recommended cygwin root path is now C:\bin\cygwin_coq_platform or C:\bin\cygw32_coq_platform
added new pick 8.18~2023.11
added new pick 8.18~mc2
the doc folder now contains an opam package dependency graph for all picks, e.g. [doc/DependencyGraph~~8.18~~2023.11.pdf]
coq-ott has been added back on Windows
coq-fiat-crypto is still removed on Windows, since version 0.0.24 results in stack overflows - there is no good work around for this - we recommend to use the prior pick 8.16~2022.09

ATTENTION:

Please see the Pick Readme 8.18~2023.11 and Pick Readme 8.18~mc2 for details on the package list.

Changes in 2023.03.0

Added new picks 8.17~~2023.08 and 8.16~~2023.08
coq-ott has been removed on Windows, since version 0.33 has issues there - if you need coq-ott we recommend to install version 0.32 via opam on Windows
coq-fiat-crypto has been removed on Windows, since version 0.0.20 results in a stack overflows - there is no good work around for this - we recommend to use the previous pick 8.16~2022.09

Please see the Pick Readme for details on the package list.

Changes in 2022.09.1

Changed picks 8.16~~2022.09 and 8.15~~2022.09 from beta to release
Updated pick 8.16~2022.09 to Coq version 8.16.1
- Coq and CoqIDE 8.16.1 contain various substantial fixes over 8.16.0

Please see the Pick Readme for details on the final package list.

Changes in 2022.09.0

added a "coq-shell" on macOS, Windows and Snap installers
- the coq-shell starts a shell or CMD window with environment set to use the installed Coq
- on macOS, the DMG installer contains a coq-shell.command file one can copy e.g. to the desktop - see macOS for details
- on Windows a coq-shell.bat file is installed and added to the start menu - see Windows
- on Linux/Snap there are two methods to start a Coq shell - see Linux
added a coq-env.sh file on macOS and Linux/Snap to be used with eval - see macOS and Linux for details
on macOS the installer should now work for macOS down to version 10.13 - this is not much tested, though - bug reports are welcome
many small usability improvements and bug fixes
beta package pick for Coq 8.16.0 with many package version updates and these additions:
- added coq-itauto.8.16.0 to the "full" level
- moved coq-mathcomp-algebra-tactics from "extended" to "full" level after update to 1.0.0
- added coq-mathcomp-word.1.1 to the "full" level
- added coq-metacoq.1.1+8.16 to the "extended" level
- added coq-fiat-crypto.0.0.15 to the "extended" level
- added coq-bedrock2.0.0.3 to the "extended" level
- added coq-bedrock2-compiler.0.0.3 to the "extended" level
- added coq-rupicola.0.0.5 to the "extended" level
- added coq-coqutil.0.0.2 to the "extended" level
- added coq-rewriter.0.0.6 to the "extended" level
- added coq-riscv.0.0.2 to the "extended" level
- removed the Flocq3 based packages

Please see the Pick Readme for details on new and updated packages.

Note on coq-quickchick: QuickChick requires an OCaml compiler to run. The binary installers for Coq Platform do not provide OCaml, so QuickChick does not work with the binary installers for macOS, Windows and Snap. It is recommended to use the "compile from sources" method if you want to use QuickChick. An alternative method is to install OCaml by other means and have it in the PATH, but this method is not supported by the Coq Platform team. We plan to add an OCaml compiler to the binary installers in the next release.

Note on coq-serapi: Installed versions (not compiled from sources versions) of serapi tools might require a --coqlib=$(coqc -where) or equivalent option to run.

Changes in 2022.04.0 / 2022.04.1

release package pick for Coq 8.15.2 with many package version updates
a package pick for Coq 8.14.1, which is as much as possible compatible with the 8.15.2 pick
re-enabled QuickChick on Windows (please see notes below)
added coq-ott and ott to the "full" level
added coq-relation-algebra to the "full" level
added coq-mathcomp-algebra-tactics to the "extended" level
added coq-extructures to the "extended" level
many small usability improvements and fixes

Please see the Pick Readme for details on new and updated packages.

Note on macOS: CoqIDE was previously wrapped in a shell script to set the environment, which had the effect that it could not access the documents folder. This script has been replaced with a simple C program, so this should work now.

Note on coq-flocq: there is a new version 4.0 for coq-flocq which is not compatible with the previous 3.X versions. Since some packages are not yet compatible with Flocq 4.0, notably coq-compcert, the 2022.04 picks contain both, coq-flocq.4.0.0 and coq-flocq.3.4.3. Since one cannot install two version of one package, a new package called coq-flocq3 has been added which uses Flocq3 rather than Flocq as logical path. This way Flocq 3.X can be selected by using Flocq3 in the Require commands and Flocq 4.X can be selected by using Flocq in the Require commands. The package coq-compcert has been patched to require Flocq3. For convenience the proof automation packages used for float proofs, coq-gappa and coq-interval are also available in a Flocq 3.X and Flocq 4.X variant. The Flocq 4.X variants have the usual logical path, the 3.X variants use the logical paths IntervalFlocq3 and GappaFlocq3.

Changes in 2022.01.0

release package pick for Coq 8.14.0 + updated mostly compatible package pick for Coq 8.13.2
beta package pick for Coq 8.15.0
added coq-hammer (not on Windows) including the provers z3 and eprover
added prime number certificate generator coq-coqprime-generator including gmp-ecm
disabled QuickChick on Windows (it did not really work on Windows - we try to make it work in the next release)

Changes in 2021.09.0

support for multiple versions of Coq (currently 8.12.2, 8.13.2, 8.14+rc1, dev)
parallel installation of several versions of Coq is possible - each version creates a separate opam switch
new substantially extended package pick for Coq 8.13.2 (the original pick from 2021.02 is also available)
new beta pick for Coq 8.14+rc1 - as close as possible to the updated pick for Coq 8.13.2

Changes in 2021.02.2

support for opam 2.1.0 (which integrates the opam system dependency manager depext - this needed a few adjustments)
fix issues with Cygwin binutils
various minor fixes for the snap package (support gappa, clightgen, ...)
various minor fixes to the Windows installer (add icon for CoqIDE, ...)
minor cleanup and improvements of the Coq Platform scripts
the versions of provided Coq packages are identical to 2021.09.0

Changes in 2021.02.1

added DMG package / installer for macOS
Coq and CoqIDE update to version 8.13.2 (bugfix release)
VST updated to version 2.7.1 (bugfix release)
new package coq-hott The Homotopy Type Theory library

</details> <details><summary>Maintaining an installation</summary>

It is not recommended to opam upgrade a Coq Platform opam switch, although this is possible. The Coq Platform script does not pin any packages - not even Coq. It just requests to install a specific version, so opam upgrade might change a lot of packages and you end up with something which is no longer an "official" Coq Platform.

Instead it is recommended to wait for the next release of Coq Platform and install it, which will create a new opam switch - or if you use a binary installer on macOS or Windows, you can choose a different installation folder. This also has the advantage that you still have the Coq Platform version you have been working with so far available, which is useful in case you need to port some proofs from the older to the new version - which might happen. You can remove the opam switch or uninstall an installed Coq Platform as soon as you no longer need it.

In general the Coq Platform team recommends to use the concept of opam switches generously. If you want to do experiments, create a new switch following the instructions for creating Coq Platform package pick variants below. You can easily switch between opam switches and do tests. Also if you follow the package pick variants approach, you can easily share your setup with other people just by sharing the Coq Platform package pick file you created. A Coq Platform switch requires between 1 and 3 GByte of disk space. The current Coq 8.13.2 distribution requires 2.3 GByte on macOS.

</details> <details><summary>Features of the Coq Platform</summary>

fully opam based, also on Windows
single script call to install system dependencies, opam (if not there), a fresh opam switch and the Coq Platform
interactive (well, script based) guidance of the user through the few parameters
one unified setup script for Windows, macOS and Linux with few operating system dependent sections only
for Windows there is an additional wrapper batch script to setup Cygwin as build and working environment
for Windows there is in addition a classic Windows installer mostly intended for quick installation by beginners
for macOS a signed (but currently not yet notarized) DMG package is provided, also mostly intended for beginners
note that snap packages for Windows are not supported any more
it is easy to build variants of the provided installers with modified content
it is supported to install several versions of Coq in parallel - each will create a separate opam switch - this is intended e.g. for porting Coq developments from older versions of Coq
system prerequisites are installed using opam depext in a system independent manner
the script should be fairly robust and safe - it will immediately abort on all errors not explicitly handled
the script can be restarted if it fails - e.g because of internet or memory issues - it will not redo things it already did

</details> <details><summary>Using different Coq versions in parallel</summary>

Especially for porting projects from an older to a newer version of Coq, Coq Platform supports to install several Coq versions in parallel. You can also use a Coq version from a previous version of Coq Platform in parallel with a Coq version from a newer version of Coq Platform. Each Coq version you install via the Coq Platform scripts will create a separate opam switch.

You can list the available switches with:

~$ opam switch
#  switch                        compiler                                              description
   CP.2024.10.0~8.12             ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.12.2 (released Dec 2020) with the first package pick from Dec 2020
   CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2021.02     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with the first package pick from Feb 2021
   CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2021.09     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with an extended package pick from Sep 2021
   CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2022.01     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with an updated package pick from Jan 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.14~2022.01     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.12.1+options  Coq 8.14.1 (released Nov 2021) with the first package pick from Jan 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.14~2022.04     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.12.1+options  Coq 8.14.1 (released Nov 2021) with an updated package pick from Apr 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.15~2022.04     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.15.2 (released Jun 2022) with the first package pick from Apr 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.15~2022.09     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.15.2 (released Jun 2022) with an updated package pick from Sep 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.16~2022.09     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.16.1 (released Nov 2022) with the first package pick from Sep 2022
   CP.2024.10.0~8.16~2023.08     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.16.1 (released Nov 2022) with an updated package pick from from Aug 2023
   CP.2024.10.0~8.17~2023.08     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.17.1 (released Jun 2023) with the first package pick from Aug 2023
   CP.2024.10.0~8.18~2023.11     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.18.0 (released Sep 2023) with the first package pick from Nov 2023
   CP.2024.10.0~8.18~mc2         ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.18.0 (released Sep 2023) with a package pick based on mathcomp 2.1
→  CP.2024.10.0~8.19~2024.10     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.2+options  Coq 8.19.2 (released Jun 2024) with the first package pick from Oct 2024
   CP.2024.10.0~dev              ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq dev (latest master of all packages)

You can select the opam switch for all shells with e.g.:

~$ opam switch CP.2024.10.0~8.19~2024.10

You can select the opam switch for just the current shell with e.g.:

eval $(opam config env --set-switch --switch CP.2024.10.0~8.19~2024.10)

So you can easily open two separate shell windows, select different opam switches and start e.g. two CoqIDE instances to step through the same file with two different versions of Coq.

</details> <details><summary>Installation of additional packages or package variants</summary>

CompCert and VST variants

For some packages, notably CompCert and VST (the Princeton tool-chain for verification of C code), exist various variants.

By default the 64 bit variant of CompCert and the 64 bit variant of VST are installed.

You can install the 32 bit variants in addition any time later by issuing opam install commands, e.g.

opam install coq-compcert-32.3.9
opam install coq-vst-32.2.8

Please note that since both variants can be installed in parallel, only one, the 64 bit variant, is immediately available to Coq without -Q and -R options. If you want to work with the 32 bit variants, please use these options in your Coq project:

-Q $(coqc -where)/../coq-variant/compcert32/compcert compcert
-Q $(coqc -where)/../coq-variant/VST32/VST VST

Important note: CompCert is not free / open source software, but may be used for research and evaluation purposes. Please clarify the license at CompCert License.

Installation of additional packages

On Windows open a shell with C:\<your_coq_platform_cygwin_path>\cygwin.bat.
On Linux or macOS open a shell in the usual way.

Run the command opam switch which will show the list of available switches:

~$ opam switch
#   switch                    compiler                                              description
CP.2024.10.0~8.12             ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.12.2 (released Dec 2020) with the first package pick from Dec 2020
CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2021.02     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with the first package pick from Feb 2021
CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2021.09     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with an extended package pick from Sep 2021
CP.2024.10.0~8.13~2022.01     ocaml-base-compiler.4.10.2                            Coq 8.13.2 (released Apr 2021) with an updated package pick from Jan 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.14~2022.01     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.12.1+options  Coq 8.14.1 (released Nov 2021) with the first package pick from Jan 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.14~2022.04     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.12.1+options  Coq 8.14.1 (released Nov 2021) with an updated package pick from Apr 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.15~2022.04     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.15.2 (released Jun 2022) with the first package pick from Apr 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.15~2022.09     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.15.2 (released Jun 2022) with an updated package pick from Sep 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.16~2022.09     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options  Coq 8.16.1 (released Nov 2022) with the first package pick from Sep 2022
CP.2024.10.0~8.16~2023.08     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.16.1 (released Nov 2022) with an updated package pick from from Aug 2023
CP.2024.10.0~8.17~2023.08     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.17.1 (released Jun 2023) with the first package pick from Aug 2023
CP.2024.10.0~8.18~2023.11     ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.18.0 (released Sep 2023) with the first package pick from Nov 2023
CP.2024.10.0~8.18~mc2         ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.1+options  Coq 8.18.0 (released Sep 2023) with a package pick based on mathcomp 2.1

→ CP.2024.10.0~~8.19~~2024.10 ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.14.2+options Coq 8.19.2 (released Jun 2024) with the first package pick from Oct 2024 CP.2024.10.0~dev ocaml-option-flambda.1,ocaml-variants.4.13.1+options Coq dev (latest master of all packages)

- Choose the switch you want to change with this command (example):
 ```
 opam switch CP.2024.10.0~8.19~2024.10
 eval $(opam env)
 ```
- You can find packages with `opam list --all | grep "some keyword"`.
- You can show the description and further details on a package with `opam show "package"`.
- Install additional packages with `opam install "package"`.
- You can find some additional information on managing Coq installation with opam at [Install Coq with opam](https://coq.inria.fr/opam-using.html).

</details>

<details><summary><font size="+1">Creating package pick variants and customized installers</font></summary>

It is an intended use case of the Coq Platform to create custom variants, e.g.
for projects or lectures, by creating additional files in the [package_picks](package_picks)
folder.

For details, especially on creating custom installers for macOS and Windows see [Customized Installers](doc/FAQ-customized-installers.md).