[Caml-list] VxWorks? mailing list?

[Caml-list] VxWorks? mailing list?

[Wheeler Ruml]

Has anyone heard of running OCaml programs under the VxWorks real-time
OS from WindRiver?  People who build actual products are asking me if
my OCaml code can run under VxWorks and I'd appreciate hearing about
any experiences others have had with either compiling the byte-code
interpreter or getting native code to work for any of the VxWorks
targets.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could point to OCaml code in
everyday office products?

Also, I've been having trouble with the mailing list search interface
- searching for "mingw" gives 0 hits although I know there are
messages with that word in them (for instance:
http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200208/msg00038.html).  I assume there
is a bug on the server side?


Thanks very much,

Wheeler
-- 
Wheeler Ruml, Palo Alto Research Center, Rm 1522, 650-812-4329 voice
ruml@parc.com, http://www.parc.com/ruml           650-812-4334 fax

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Re: [Caml-list] VxWorks? mailing list?

[Xavier Leroy]

> Has anyone heard of running OCaml programs under the VxWorks real-time
> OS from WindRiver?  People who build actual products are asking me if
> my OCaml code can run under VxWorks and I'd appreciate hearing about
> any experiences others have had with either compiling the byte-code
> interpreter or getting native code to work for any of the VxWorks
> targets.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could point to OCaml code in
> everyday office products?

I have no experience with VxWorks, but from their Web site it appears
to be POSIX-compliant.  If so, chances are very high that the bytecode
interpreter will compile and work right out of the box.  For the
native-code compiler, the porting effort can range from the trivial
(e.g. one of the supported configurations just happens to work) to the
fairly hard (e.g. a new code generator has to be written).  It's not
possible to say without more details on the target platform and
environment.

- Xavier Leroy

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Re: [Caml-list] VxWorks? mailing list?

[David Brown]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 12:26:43PM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:

> I have no experience with VxWorks, but from their Web site it appears
> to be POSIX-compliant.  If so, chances are very high that the bytecode
> interpreter will compile and work right out of the box.  For the
> native-code compiler, the porting effort can range from the trivial
> (e.g. one of the supported configurations just happens to work) to the
> fairly hard (e.g. a new code generator has to be written).  It's not
> possible to say without more details on the target platform and
> environment.

It might be a little harder than just compiling to get the byte code
interpreter working.  It depends on the byte-code interpreters demand
for memory management.  Most VxWorks systems I use just have a single
address space.  VxWorks can be thought of as a single task on a Posix
system with multiple threads.

It also don't have a normal shell and that kind of stuff, so the code
would have to be byte-compiled on one machine and moved over.  It would
probably be easiest to use -output-obj to have the linker include the
object.

Cross compilation didn't look that easy last time I thought about trying
to do it.

Dave

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Re: [Caml-list] VxWorks? mailing list?

[james woodyatt]

On Sunday, Mar 30, 2003, at 02:26 US/Pacific, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> [Someone else asked]
>> Has anyone heard of running OCaml programs under the VxWorks real-time
>> OS from WindRiver?  People who build actual products are asking me if
>> my OCaml code can run under VxWorks and I'd appreciate hearing about
>> any experiences others have had with either compiling the byte-code
>> interpreter or getting native code to work for any of the VxWorks
>> targets.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could point to OCaml code in
>> everyday office products?
>
> I have no experience with VxWorks, but from their Web site it appears
> to be POSIX-compliant.  If so, chances are very high that the bytecode
> interpreter will compile and work right out of the box.  For the
> native-code compiler, the porting effort can range from the trivial
> (e.g. one of the supported configurations just happens to work) to the
> fairly hard (e.g. a new code generator has to be written).  It's not
> possible to say without more details on the target platform and
> environment.

I have experience with VxWorks.  Its "POSIX compliance" is narrow.  
Code is generally cross-compiled and deployment is much more like 
loading a module into a dynamic kernel rather than launching a POSIX 
process.

I would expect that some non-trivial labor would be involved in porting 
the build process for the byte-code interpreter to make it live with 
the VxWorks cross-development tools in $WIND_BASE/host/$arch/bin.  Then 
there would likely be a collection of issues revolving around symbol 
conflicts, i.e. things defined in the byte-code interpreter that are 
provided by VxWorks-- or by whatever other Wind River platform packages 
you're using.  There would finally be issues associated with making the 
VxWorks IPC mechanisms available to OCaml programs.

The native-code compiler could also be a major additional headache if 
the CPU of your target is something weird, like say an ARM processor.

I like OCaml, but I suspect that Lua might be a better choice for 
bringing functional programming to the embedded application world.  It 
would probably be a lot easier to get Lua up and running under VxWorks.


-- 
j h woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com>

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[Caml-list] Re: VxWorks? mailing list?

[Wheeler Ruml]

> > Has anyone heard of running OCaml programs under the VxWorks real-time
> > OS from WindRiver?
>
> Its "POSIX compliance" is narrow.  Code is generally cross-compiled
> and deployment is much more like loading a module into a dynamic
> kernel rather than launching a POSIX process.  I would expect that
> some non-trivial labor would be involved in porting the build
> process for the byte-code interpreter to make it live with the
> VxWorks cross-development tools

Oh my.  OK - thanks very much for the advice.  The VxWorks target
would be PowerPC, but it sounds like porting even the byte-code
interpreter is no sure thing.


Wheeler
-- 
Wheeler Ruml, Palo Alto Research Center, Rm 1522, 650-812-4329 voice
ruml@parc.com, http://www.parc.com/ruml           650-812-4334 fax

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