Re: OCaml on CLR/JVM?

["Toby Watson" <toby@tui.co.uk>]

> > One thing I learnt is that the real problem with language
> > interoperability is not how to compile language X to virtual machine Y
> > (this can always be done, albeit more or less efficiently), but rather
> > how to map between X's data structures and objects and those of all
> > other languages Z1 ... Zn that also compile down to Y.
>
> To look at it another way, OCaml already shares a platform with C (at
least
> with the native-code compiler), so all the C libraries are already
> available.
> Yet it can still be a lot of effort to link with a C library.  Why should
> Java and .NET be any easier?  Also, look at the effort that went into
making
> an ML/Java system with MLj.


As I understand it part of the .NET effort is to specify *some* common
higher-level to decrease types the impedence mismatch between languages. I
think this is called the common language specification,  and there is some
further common type system (probably defines a protocol for collections and
such) CTS.

Whether or not they are successful - and I know the project7 is still
carrying out research to improve type system compatibility - the Idea is to
have practical interoperability between languages. Basically this is to
improve upon the situation where you can make method calls, or even marshall
objects between langauges but still need to generate pages of IDL or custom
headers to have a decent interface. This goal is aided by retaining the type
signatures and other information in binary files.

Some general but useful non-MS background:

http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/information/dotnet/mercury_and_dotne
t.html

not so non-MS

http://www.dnjonline.com/articles/essentials/iss21_essentials.html

cheers,
toby