[MLton-user] A few questions

[David Hansel]

Hi all,

First of all,  kudos to everybody for fixing the issues
I mentioned in my last post
(http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2007-March/029675.html)
Using the 20070826 release we were able to successfully
compile and run our (rather large) code base.  However,
there are a few questions left:

- Although our code runs about 25-30% faster when compiled
  with MLton compared to SML/NJ,  we were wondering if
  there are possibilities to improve on that.
  We are using MinGW to compile on Windows.  However, our
  MinGW version is quite old (gcc 3.2.3 from 2003-05-04).
  Given that MLton produces assembly code I would expect
  that the compiler version does not make a difference
  concerning performance of the compiled application.  Is
  that true?
  Are there some basic style guidelines that outline good/bad
  programming styles regarding performance with MLton?

- Which version of MinGW do you use for compiling/testing
  of MLton on Windows?  I have tried to upgrade to the current
  MinGW version but ran into compile errors about conflicts
  between some standard header files and
  mlton/include/platform/mingw.h (Unfortunately, I do not
  have the specific errors available right now).

- One reason why we are considering moving to MLton is to support
  the AMD64 platform on Windows.  As far as I understand, MLton
  already can produce 64bit compatible code but the problem is to
  find a compiler/build system on Windows that produces 64 bit
  executables.  I found this thread
  http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2007-July/029907.html
  which talks about some issues but does not come to a workable
  conclusion.  Has anyone made progress or gained some more
  insights into this?

- We have observed that the executable size for our application
  when compiled with MLton is about 3x the size of the heap generated
  by SML/NJ for the same application (60MB vs. 20MB).  Does anybody
  have an idea what could be the reason for this?  Any suggestions as
  to how we can track down where the large size comes from?

Again,  thanks for all the support so far.

Best regards,

David


-- 
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  David Hansel
  Senior Software Engineer -- Reactive Systems, Inc.
  http://www.reactive-systems.com/
  ----------------------------------------------------------