Re: [Caml-list] OCaml version 3.11.0+beta1

[Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>]

>> Native dynlink used to work on Mac OS X < 10.5 (x86 only). The new
>> linker in 10.5 does not support linking shared libraries with non-PIC
>> code. It is still possible to use the old linker, called ld_classic,
>> but some libraries (like X11) does not work, so this has been disabled
>> in the configure script.
>>
>> The clean solution to make natdynlink work on recent Mac OS X systems
>> (beside convincing Apple to support the old behavior of their linker
>> in their new implementation) is to change OCaml's x86 backend so that
>> it produces only PIC code (this has been done for the AMD64 port). I
>> don't think there is currently any plan to work on that.
> 
> Ouch, this makes it almost a dead end for us. I can offer some time to
> help in this effort, working in the port, or providing feedback. The
> native dynlink and toplevel are, at least to me, the killer features in
> 3.11, but adding another hole for Mac OS X intel (in addition to not
> supporting x86_64) does not seem like the best choice for an
> increasingly popular architecture.

Well, we'd very much like to support native dynlink on OS X 10.5,
but Apple is not helping in the least by crippling their linker
compared with the one in 10.4.  If anyone from Apple is on this list,
feel free to contact us at caml-devel@yquem.inria.fr for more
information on this regression.

- Xavier Leroy