[MLton] Windows port of MLton using the Microsoft tools (e.g. without MinGW)

[Wesley Terpstra]

On Jul 26, 2007, at 4:01 PM, skaller wrote:
> Why does Mlton need any "Unix-ish" code? It's a language translator,
> the bulk of the compiler should be entirely platform independent.

Well, sure, it doesn't NEED to be Unix-ish, but it is. The path of  
least resistance is to leave it that way. However, I didn't realize  
that Nicolas had already gotten it to a more-or-less working state.  
If someone actually *wants* to make it work with a MS compiler, good  
luck to them! I will still use the MinGW port, though, because that  
compiler is free and is less effort when I port from unix.

> Windows has more advanced dynamic linker support than Unix

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Windows decided that it couldn't fix it's broken dynamic link  
libraries, so switched to what amounts to static linking. I'm sure MS  
wants us all to believe this is a better model, but there's many  
reasons it's not (a bug in the library, anyone?). Unix has had  
working libraries for ages, and no one talks about replacing them,  
because the model actually works. I suppose it's easier to install  
applications if you don't need to track down libraries, but package  
management systems solved this years ago.

> So whilst Mlton likes to mess about with very high performance low  
> level optimisation

I believe the opposite is true. MLton's "low-level" optimizations are  
terrible! Most of the speed-up comes from much earlier optimizations.  
I was quite hopeful when there was talk about MLton+LLVM.