RE: [Caml-list] Effect of Windows LLP64 architecture on 64 bit MingW OCaml

["Soegtrop, Michael" <michael.soegtrop@intel.com>]

Dear Gerd,

> Officially, the OCaml build doesn't support that host arch <> build arch.
> (Remember, this is a feature gcc supports, and nothing "a compiler needs to
> be aware of".)
> 
> But anyway, the situation is a little bit different than for a C compiler. OCaml
> uses bytecode for bootstrapping, and you can e.g. run the bytecode
> executables built for arch X on arch Y with the ocamlrun for arch Y. So, if you
> wanted, you can have host <> build on your own.

All true, but what counts is how easy it is to do this in practice. In the end you say it is not required to have this because it is more or less trivial for Ocaml. But in practice it doesn't look like this is really the case.

Btw.: I think we are talking about host<>target. Build (in gcc terms this is the OS on which gcc is build) is likely almost always Cygwin and I don't see a good reason to change this.

> That said, this is only the explanation why host<>build was so far not of
> special interest.

I guess host<>target would be easiest to get opam to work and opam would be best for those who are mostly working on Linux but want to support Windows binaries.

> The Makefile.nt system exists mainly for the MSVC build. I also think that the
> mingw build would be better done with the Makefiles.

I see. I guess an Ocaml build is very special, but did the Ocaml community ever consider cmake or bakefiles? The main advantage, besides supplying cross platform builds in a maintainable way, is that they also supply IDE project files, which makes it more comfortable to work on Ocaml itself, especially libraries.

Best regards,

Michael
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