Am Donnerstag, den 14.07.2016, 21:26 +0200 schrieb Sébastien Hinderer:
> Hi Gerd,
> 
> Gerd Stolpmann (2016/07/12 23:39 +0200):
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've tried to reactivate the ocamlnat tool that comes with OCaml but
> > isn't built (and even isn't buildable). This repo was tested against
> > 4.02.3:
> > 
> > https://gitlab.camlcity.org/gerd/ocamlnat
> > 
> > Since recently I'm quite interested in this, and would like to make it
> > fully working, including ocamlfind support. For my use case the
> > disadvantages of the ocamlnat approach (i.e. that it requires toolchain
> > support for dynlinking, and that the executable continuously grows) do
> > not matter - I really want it for interactive work, and not for
> > scripting.
> 
> I just wanted to mention that ocamltest's "toplevel" builtin test runs a
> test-file in both the byte-code and the native toplevel.
> 
> For some tests the results are a bit different in the two toplevels, but
> for most of them they are similar.

In deed, the native toplevel seems to run fine. So far I made the
following adjustments in my repo:

 - renamed the modules so that the same names as for the bytecode
   version are used (e.g. Opttoploop becomes just Toploop)
 - added the missing definitions so that the interfaces are
   identical to the bytecode version
 - now, findlib already worked when I loaded cmxs files instead
   of cma files
 - there was a bug that -linkall was not set when the cmxs files
   were on-the-fly generated
 - I also changed the error paths a little bit so that ocamlnat
   no longer crashes when a symbol isn't found. The error paths
   probably require more work.

Now you can do:

OCAMLFIND_CONF=/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/findlib.conf ./ocamlnat
        OCaml version 4.02.3 - native toplevel

# #use "/home/gerd/pub/lib-findlib/src/findlib/topfind";;
- : unit = ()
Findlib has been successfully loaded. Additional directives:
  #require "package";;      to load a package
  #list;;                   to list the available packages
  #camlp4o;;                to load camlp4 (standard syntax)
  #camlp4r;;                to load camlp4 (revised syntax)
  #predicates "p,q,...";;   to set these predicates
  Topfind.reset();;         to force that packages will be reloaded
  #thread;;                 to enable threads

- : unit = ()
# #require "yojson";;
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/easy-format: added to search path
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/easy-format/easy_format.cmx: loaded
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/biniou: added to search path
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/biniou/biniou.cmxa: loaded
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/yojson: added to search path
/opt/opam-4.02/4.02.3/lib/yojson/yojson.cmx: loaded
# Yojson.version;;
- : string = "1.3.2"

(Using the "ocamlnat" branch of findlib.)

It is interesting that only very little work was needed to get there.
I'll test that more out in the next days, and I think there will be a PR
soon.

Gerd
-- 
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Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
My OCaml site:          http://www.camlcity.org
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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