[Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Will Benton]

How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?



thanks,
wb

-- 
Will Benton      | "Die richtige Methode der Philosophie wäre eigentlich 
willb@acm.org    |  die: Nichts zu sagen, als was sich sagen läßt...."
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Eric C. Cooper]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 01:38:05PM -0600, Will Benton wrote:
> How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?

The short answer to your question is: not as well as under x86 Linux.

I just did a quick test on a Debian powerpc, using the latest ocaml,
lablgtk, and lablgl packages (from Debian "unstable") to compile apps
that I originally wrote on an x86.

My vanilla OCaml and GTK apps compiled and ran OK with ocamlc.  They
compiled with ocamlopt but did not work (the resulting code just
looped).  They didn't compile with ocamlopt.opt: the compiler itself
would either loop or segfault (consistent with the previous
observation of ocamlopt producing buggy code).

The lablgl applications did not appear to work even when built with
ocamlc; they produced X protocol errors.

When I track the problems down a bit further, I'll file the bugs with
the Caml group or the Debian maintainer.

-- 
Eric C. Cooper          e c c @ c m u . e d u
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Xavier Leroy]

> How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?

Fairly well.  This is one of the platforms that we have easy access
to, so every release is tested under LinuxPPC.  One of the OCaml
developers regularly works under LinuxPPC; another recently fell in
love with MacOSX and defected :-)  

The only known problem with OCaml for the PowerPC (Linux and MacOSX)
is that ocamlopt can generate assembly code that fails to assemble
on programs that contain very large functions.  The assembler issues
an error, so it's not a case of bad code being silently generated.
This affects native-code compilation of certain applications, such as
Coq and (ironically) one component of the OCaml compiler (camlp4.opt,
generated during "make opt.opt").  This was fixed recently in the
working sources.

No other problems have been reported to us.  If you encounter one,
please file bug reports.

- Xavier Leroy
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Eric C. Cooper]

Allow me to retract my earlier remarks on the quality of OCaml on
powerpc Linux.  I can't always reproduce the problems I was seeing, so
there is probably some other source of flakiness on that machine.
No defamation of the fine Caml team was intended.

-- 
Eric C. Cooper          e c c @ c m u . e d u
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Sven]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 10:17:33PM -0500, Eric C. Cooper wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 01:38:05PM -0600, Will Benton wrote:
> > How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?
> 
> The short answer to your question is: not as well as under x86 Linux.
> 
> I just did a quick test on a Debian powerpc, using the latest ocaml,
> lablgtk, and lablgl packages (from Debian "unstable") to compile apps
> that I originally wrote on an x86.
> 
> My vanilla OCaml and GTK apps compiled and ran OK with ocamlc.  They
> compiled with ocamlopt but did not work (the resulting code just
> looped).  They didn't compile with ocamlopt.opt: the compiler itself
> would either loop or segfault (consistent with the previous
> observation of ocamlopt producing buggy code).

Yes, there seems to be a bug in the actual powerpc version of the native code
compilers. Xavier and the ocaml team are aware of that and actively working on
it (i don't know if there is a solution yet though).

That said, previous versions of ocaml did work fine on ppc, and i have great
hopes that this will happen again as soon as this bug is corrected.

In the meantime, i will disable native code build on ppc, just to be on the
safe side.

> The lablgl applications did not appear to work even when built with
> ocamlc; they produced X protocol errors.

huh ???

> When I track the problems down a bit further, I'll file the bugs with
> the Caml group or the Debian maintainer.

:)))

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Sven]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 04:25:58PM +0100, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?
> 
> Fairly well.  This is one of the platforms that we have easy access
> to, so every release is tested under LinuxPPC.  One of the OCaml
> developers regularly works under LinuxPPC; another recently fell in
> love with MacOSX and defected :-)  
> 
> The only known problem with OCaml for the PowerPC (Linux and MacOSX)
> is that ocamlopt can generate assembly code that fails to assemble
> on programs that contain very large functions.  The assembler issues
> an error, so it's not a case of bad code being silently generated.
> This affects native-code compilation of certain applications, such as
> Coq and (ironically) one component of the OCaml compiler (camlp4.opt,
> generated during "make opt.opt").  This was fixed recently in the
> working sources.

Could a patch be extracted of the current working source that i could apply to
the debian package ?

This is rather urgent for me, as woody freeze time is RSN, and i would rather
disable ppc native code before the freeze rather than shiping a package with
problems.

Also, did you also solve the problem on ia64, or do you not have access to
such a machine ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] caml on LinuxPPC

[Sven]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 10:40:55AM +0100, Sven wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 10:17:33PM -0500, Eric C. Cooper wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 01:38:05PM -0600, Will Benton wrote:
> > > How well-supported is OCaml under LinuxPPC?
> > 
> > The short answer to your question is: not as well as under x86 Linux.
> > 
> > I just did a quick test on a Debian powerpc, using the latest ocaml,
> > lablgtk, and lablgl packages (from Debian "unstable") to compile apps
> > that I originally wrote on an x86.
> > 
> > My vanilla OCaml and GTK apps compiled and ran OK with ocamlc.  They
> > compiled with ocamlopt but did not work (the resulting code just
> > looped).  They didn't compile with ocamlopt.opt: the compiler itself
> > would either loop or segfault (consistent with the previous
> > observation of ocamlopt producing buggy code).
> 
> Yes, there seems to be a bug in the actual powerpc version of the native code
> compilers. Xavier and the ocaml team are aware of that and actively working on
> it (i don't know if there is a solution yet though).
> 
> That said, previous versions of ocaml did work fine on ppc, and i have great
> hopes that this will happen again as soon as this bug is corrected.
> 
> In the meantime, i will disable native code build on ppc, just to be on the
> safe side.

Hello, ...

Just as a follow up on this, i did get the powerpc patch from Xavier out of
CVS and applied it to the debian packages. The packages build fine now on
powerpc, and this kind of problems should have been gone.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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