[MLton] Generating C libraries from MLton (patch)

[Matthew Fluet]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Wesley W. Terpstra wrote:
> Since the previous attempt to build C libraries with MLton seems to have
> fizzled out, I have taken it over. :-)

I strongly suggest that you add a 'doc/examples/ffi-shared' directory and 
populate it with some sample code (and a Makefile) that demonstrates how 
to build and use libraries and shared libraries.  It would go a long way 
towards making testing on different platforms easier.

The overall architecture seems good, and I know that a lot of commits have 
already been made.  (In retrospect, perhaps this would have been better 
undertaken on a branch, but it hasn't seemed too disruptive to normal 
executable compiles.)  I would also suggest that commit messages comment 
directly on the commit in question; some of them seem to dump a lot of 
information that isn't relevant to the particular commit.  The information 
is good -- just send it directly to the mailing list or put it on the 
wiki.

Another thing that would be helpful would be to document some things on 
the wiki.  Something I would be interested in seeing is pointers/links to 
other documentation that informs the design/implementation.  Particularly 
with regards to the changes in the codegen, it would be comforting to see 
an ABI document, and not simply working from the output of 'gcc -S'.