new release of MLton, an optimizing SML compiler

Stephen Weeks MLton@sourcelight.com
Fri, 14 Jul 2000 13:04:58 -0700 (PDT)


> So can you give me a hacker perspetive on what has changed? i.e. IR
> wise.. have the variant types gone away in the IR?

Yes. :-)  Case statements now implicitly destructure their constructed
args.  That was the only IL change (as far as I remember).

> There were lots of silly
> things that forced me to hack my code in before CPS I'd love to hack my code
> in after CPS and am wondering if the new release has made my life eaiser...

Was that due to variant types or something else?

As to other changes:
* lots of bug fixes (compiler and basis library)
* basis library additions
* a couple new Cps optimizations
* somewhat different runtime to handle threads and signals
* more conservative register allocator (due to context switching at
   any limit check point)
* the generated C code now looks very different -- more like assembly

> BTW I got the following error trying to access the MLton html manual...
> 
> Not Found
> 
> The requested URL /MLton/HTML/main.css was not found on this server.

We're on to it.  As soon as Henry gets in, it should be fixed.  I
still don't understand why it works for me.  Somehow my netscape
magically caches main.css or something.