Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] OCaml-Java project: 1.0 release

[forum@x9c.fr]

Selon Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:

> On Tuesday 27 May 2008 06:46:23 forum@x9c.fr wrote:
>
> I would love to test this but I do have some questions:
>
> 1. Do threads run in parallel, i.e. does it leverage the concurrent GC in the
> JVM?

No. This is in fact not possible as some parts of the OCaml runtime work only
under the assumption that there is only one thread in the runtime at once.
However, as soon as this assumption is lifted it will be possible to use
the concurrent GC of the JVM (the OCaml summer of code is supposed to deliver
such a patch to be integrated in the official Caml distribution if I remember
correctly).


> 2. What is the performance like?

As of today, performance is not good. My objective for the 1.x branch is to
work on compatibility with the original implementation. Performance issues
are postponed to the 2.x branch. In the meantime, OCaml-Java has proved fast
enough to program lightweight GUI applications. Moreover, the very early (and
unconclusive) tests I run seem to show that it compete with so-called script
languages.


> 3. Is anyone working on Debian packages for OCamlJava?

Well, Richard Jones provided a Fedora package for alpha/beta.
It should not be very hard to adapt to 1.0 final, or to Debian.


> 4. Are tail calls fully implemented and, if not, when exactly do they work?

Tail calls are fully implemented for direct recursion, but not for calls to
other functions (it is not possible to "jump" out of a method in Java).


Thank you for your interest,

Xavier Clerc