Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Yaron Minsky]

This is my periodic reminder to the FP world that Jane Street is
looking to hire functional programmers.  I've started getting the
occasional inquiry coming in from people who are clearly unsure if our
previous hiring announcements still apply, and I wanted to make it
clear that they do.  So, at the risk of boring longtime residents of
the list to tears:

Despite the problems besetting much of the financial industry, we have
grown strongly in the last few years in our people, our technology,
the scope of our business and its profitability.  We now have over 30
OCaml developers, and we are actively looking to hire more in Tokyo,
London and New York.

For someone who cares about functional programming, Jane Street is an
interesting place to consider.  Jane Street has invested deeply in
OCaml, to the point where we now have the largest team of OCaml
programmers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's
largest OCaml codebase--over a million lines.  We really believe in
functional programming, and use OCaml for everything from research to
systems adminstration to trading systems.

The atmosphere is informal and intellectual, with a focus on learning.
The work itself is deeply challenging, and you get to see the
practical impact of your efforts in quick and dramatic terms.  Jane
Street is also a small enough place that people have the freedom to
get involved in many different areas of the business.

Unlike many financial firms, software and technology are considered a
core part of what we do, not some segmented-off cost center that the
people who run the business don't think about.  Jane Street is a place
where people really care about the quality of the software, to the
point that several of the most senior members of the firm, who do not
have technology backgrounds, nonetheless review critical portions of
the codebase before they can go into production.

If you'd like to learn more, here are some links.  First, there are a
couple of papers we've written about our experiences here.

   http://www.janestreet.com/technology/articles.php

We also have a technically-oriented blog:

  http://ocaml.janestreet.com

For a (recruiting-oriented) overview of Jane Street, here's the firm
website:

  http://janestreet.com

If you're interested, send me a resume and cover letter.

y

Re: Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Yaron Minsky]

And by-the-by, I will be at parts of ICFP, CUFP and DEFUN this year, so
if you're interested in hearing more about Jane Street, you should come
by and chat.

y

On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 17:50 -0400, Yaron Minsky wrote:
> This is my periodic reminder to the FP world that Jane Street is
> looking to hire functional programmers.  I've started getting the
> occasional inquiry coming in from people who are clearly unsure if our
> previous hiring announcements still apply, and I wanted to make it
> clear that they do.  So, at the risk of boring longtime residents of
> the list to tears:
> 
> Despite the problems besetting much of the financial industry, we have
> grown strongly in the last few years in our people, our technology,
> the scope of our business and its profitability.  We now have over 30
> OCaml developers, and we are actively looking to hire more in Tokyo,
> London and New York.
> 
> For someone who cares about functional programming, Jane Street is an
> interesting place to consider.  Jane Street has invested deeply in
> OCaml, to the point where we now have the largest team of OCaml
> programmers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's
> largest OCaml codebase--over a million lines.  We really believe in
> functional programming, and use OCaml for everything from research to
> systems adminstration to trading systems.
> 
> The atmosphere is informal and intellectual, with a focus on learning.
> The work itself is deeply challenging, and you get to see the
> practical impact of your efforts in quick and dramatic terms.  Jane
> Street is also a small enough place that people have the freedom to
> get involved in many different areas of the business.
> 
> Unlike many financial firms, software and technology are considered a
> core part of what we do, not some segmented-off cost center that the
> people who run the business don't think about.  Jane Street is a place
> where people really care about the quality of the software, to the
> point that several of the most senior members of the firm, who do not
> have technology backgrounds, nonetheless review critical portions of
> the codebase before they can go into production.
> 
> If you'd like to learn more, here are some links.  First, there are a
> couple of papers we've written about our experiences here.
> 
>    http://www.janestreet.com/technology/articles.php
> 
> We also have a technically-oriented blog:
> 
>   http://ocaml.janestreet.com
> 
> For a (recruiting-oriented) overview of Jane Street, here's the firm
> website:
> 
>   http://janestreet.com
> 
> If you're interested, send me a resume and cover letter.
> 
> y
> 

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Romain Beauxis]

	Hi !

Le mardi 11 août 2009 16:50:07, Yaron Minsky a écrit :
> For someone who cares about functional programming, Jane Street is an
> interesting place to consider.  Jane Street has invested deeply in
> OCaml, to the point where we now have the largest team of OCaml
> programmers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's
> largest OCaml codebase--over a million lines.  We really believe in
> functional programming, and use OCaml for everything from research to
> systems adminstration to trading systems.

Since you wrote a long mail presenting your activity, it would also be nice to 
present what you actually *do* with ocaml in this presentation. I guess when 
one seeks for a job, he might also care about this aspect, in particular in 
the financial world.

I believe this message are an abuse of the mailing list. It would be more 
respectful to use the dedicated mailing list, which is clearly indicated in 
the same page where this list is documented, see:
  http://caml.inria.fr/resources/forums.en.html

"OCaml jobs and internships list  ocaml-jobs AT inria.fr
This list is for exchanges between people looking for a job or an internship 
requiring skills in OCaml and people, corporations, universities, ..., offering 
such jobs or internships."

Cheers,

Romain

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Yaron Minsky]

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On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Romain Beauxis <toots@rastageeks.org>wrote:

> Le mardi 11 août 2009 16:50:07, Yaron Minsky a écrit :
> > For someone who cares about functional programming, Jane Street is an
> > interesting place to consider.  Jane Street has invested deeply in
> > OCaml, to the point where we now have the largest team of OCaml
> > programmers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's
> > largest OCaml codebase--over a million lines.  We really believe in
> > functional programming, and use OCaml for everything from research to
> > systems adminstration to trading systems.
>
> Since you wrote a long mail presenting your activity, it would also be nice
> to
> present what you actually *do* with ocaml in this presentation. I guess
> when
> one seeks for a job, he might also care about this aspect, in particular in
> the financial world.


I think the text above does hint at the range of things we work on in OCaml,
but if you want to get a better feel, there are a couple of good sources:
first, there's an article that Stephen Weeks and I wrote for JFP, which you
can find here:

   http://janestreet.com/technology/articles.php

Also, there's video of a talk I gave at CMU:

  http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/61

It's hard to be too precise in a short missive about the kind of things we
do in OCaml, because our use is so diverse.  One of the things that I think
speaks well for OCaml is that we have found it to be highly effective for so
many different kinds of things --- whether we're writing admin tools or
research codes or automated trading systems, it is our tool of choice.

I believe this message are an abuse of the mailing list. It would be more
> respectful to use the dedicated mailing list, which is clearly indicated in
> the same page where this list is documented, see:
>  http://caml.inria.fr/resources/forums.en.html
>
> "OCaml jobs and internships list  ocaml-jobs AT inria.fr
> This list is for exchanges between people looking for a job or an
> internship
> requiring skills in OCaml and people, corporations, universities, ...,
> offering
> such jobs or internships."


I believe it's fairly well established that job announcements are welcome on
the caml list, and that the appearance of the ocaml-jobs list does not
change that.  Here's a thread that asks and answers that very question.


http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_frm/thread/9d3d8d1e38ff6025/91cb814e46e8c414#91cb814e46e8c414

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Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Andrej Bauer]

> I believe it's fairly well established that job announcements are welcome on
> the caml list, and that the appearance of the ocaml-jobs list does not
> change that.

I support Yaron's opinion and do not mind the occasional job announcement.

Now if someone could tell me how to receive only those conference
announcements that are relevant to me, that would be a different
story.

Andrej

P.S. From what I gather Jane Street uses ocaml to get rich by sending
golden coins to itself back in time through tiny short-lived quantum
loops in the spacetime continuum. They invest the golden coins that
trickle in. When the investments result in profit, they send the
profit back in time again, to get even more golden coins in the past.
The Ocaml programmers are responsible for computing the telemetry of
the coins in real time without numerical errors.

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Romain Beauxis]

	Hi !

Le dimanche 16 août 2009 13:56:40, Yaron Minsky a écrit :
> I believe it's fairly well established that job announcements are welcome
> on the caml list, and that the appearance of the ocaml-jobs list does not
> change that.  Here's a thread that asks and answers that very question.

Ok, thanks. I must admit I was wrong. Since I'm neither an admin nor the 
majority (apparently), you're right. However, I am annoyed by those messages.



Kind regards,

Romain

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Alexy Khrabrov]

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I believe that any OCaml job posting is such a cause to rejoice, that the
only event which comes less frequently is a Haskell job posting! :)  You
have to be pretty heartless, or not planning to work as a functional
programmer for money, to not be delighted by those sensible and interesting
reminders from Yaron.  He also makes them dynamic, keeping adding various
cities of the world to the mix!
Cheers,
Alexy

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Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Romain Beauxis]

	Hi !

Le lundi 17 août 2009 15:02:10, Alexy Khrabrov a écrit :
> I believe that any OCaml job posting is such a cause to rejoice, that the
> only event which comes less frequently is a Haskell job posting! :)  You
> have to be pretty heartless, or not planning to work as a functional
> programmer for money, to not be delighted by those sensible and interesting
> reminders from Yaron.  He also makes them dynamic, keeping adding various
> cities of the world to the mix!

I am very happy to see OCaml being adopted widely, and in particular when it 
come to reliability which is the case here. Otherwise, I don't see the point 
in figthing with Haskell, but that's not the topic.

Well, you know, not all the people have the same background. A job interest is 
very different than a technical interest.

Hence, when discussing about jobs and this stuff, it can quickly show some huge 
differences. For instance, I don't think that OCaml's maintainers at INRIA have 
the same interests about the language than people in Janest. Nor the same 
income.

Even more, some people contribute to OCaml in their spare time, which means 
they don't get money from it, and probably don't want.

More over, although we are all here to discuss about the technical issues in 
OCaml, we don't all have the same ideas about external concerns, in particular 
finance in my case.

However, even though my first message was probably a bit rude, I did not mean 
to argue in this topic. I don't believe this is a place for that, and, all in 
all, I wish all the best to other contributors to OCaml, although I do not 
necessarily like the application themselves.

Hence, I would argue that a seperation in this topic would be a good thing to 
avoid furstrating people that have different background but would otherwise 
have very fruitful interactions in the pure field of technical concerns about 
OCaml.

I also think it's been enough on this topic, for the very reasons I've just 
explained !


All the best,

Romain

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Kip Macy]

> Le lundi 17 août 2009 15:02:10, Alexy Khrabrov a écrit :
>> I believe that any OCaml job posting is such a cause to rejoice, that the
>> only event which comes less frequently is a Haskell job posting! :)  You
>> have to be pretty heartless, or not planning to work as a functional
>> programmer for money, to not be delighted by those sensible and interesting
>> reminders from Yaron.  He also makes them dynamic, keeping adding various
>> cities of the world to the mix!


I don't anticipate ever doing functional programming professionally
and I have absolutely no interest in ever living in New York or
London. Moving back to Japan would be fun but for the fact that my
wife speaks no Japanese and forcing my friends to speak English or
having a running translation of the dialog is simply not realistic.
Nonetheless, the number of employers using Ocaml is currently
sufficiently small in number that periodically hearing about
employment opportunities is interesting to me as a reminder that it
isn't just a research language. That said, if it were to ever reach
even the level of the innumerable niche conference announcements then
a push to ocaml-jobs would probably be appropriate.

-Kip

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Matthew Macy]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Romain Beauxis<toots@rastageeks.org> wrote:
>        Hi !
>
> Le lundi 17 août 2009 15:02:10, Alexy Khrabrov a écrit :
>> I believe that any OCaml job posting is such a cause to rejoice, that the
>> only event which comes less frequently is a Haskell job posting! :)  You
>> have to be pretty heartless, or not planning to work as a functional
>> programmer for money, to not be delighted by those sensible and interesting
>> reminders from Yaron.  He also makes them dynamic, keeping adding various
>> cities of the world to the mix!


I don't anticipate ever doing functional programming professionally
and I have absolutely no interest in ever living in New York or
London. Moving back to Japan would be fun but for the fact that my
wife speaks no Japanese and forcing my friends to speak English or
having a running translation of the dialog is simply not realistic.
Nonetheless, the number of employers using Ocaml is currently
sufficiently small in number that periodically hearing about
employment opportunities is interesting to me as a reminder that it
isn't just a research language. That said, if it were to ever reach
even the level of the innumerable niche conference announcements then
a push to ocaml-jobs would probably be appropriate.

Cheers

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Matthew Macy wrote:

> I don't anticipate ever doing functional programming professionally

Why ever not?

I'm at a small VC funded startup and I use Ocaml and Haskell
for production code on a regular basis. We have a small but
growing collection of code written in langauges that are a
joy to work with and way more robust and debuggable than the
larger body of C and C++ code we have.

Erik
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Matthew Macy]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 15:44, Erik de Castro
Lopo<mle+ocaml@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> Matthew Macy wrote:
>
>> I don't anticipate ever doing functional programming professionally
>
> Why ever not?
>
> I'm at a small VC funded startup and I use Ocaml and Haskell
> for production code on a regular basis. We have a small but
> growing collection of code written in langauges that are a
> joy to work with and way more robust and debuggable than the
> larger body of C and C++ code we have.



When I re-sent the e-mail under my subscribed address I should have
further clarified my statement. If my initial e-mail address had been
allowed through it would have been self-evident. All of my
professional time is spent doing things like lock pushdown in the
network stack, identifying and eliminating false sharing between
structures, minimizing lock contention in the file system, 10GigE
network drivers etc. All of which is done in 'C' and will be for the
foreseeable future. Consequently, there is a gap between my areas of
expertise and the areas where functional programming comes in to play.
Thus, unless I shift my work in to one of those areas or pick up a
side project there I don't see how Ocaml could play a large role in my
life. My interest is purely out of intellectual curiosity.

I apologize for the confusion. I was not slighting functional
programming - just pointing out that even though I do not have any use
for the job postings I do not find them to be out of place.

Cheers


-- 
When harsh accusations depart too far from the truth, they leave
bitter consequences.
--Tacitus

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Matthew Macy wrote:

> All of my
> professional time is spent doing things like lock pushdown in the
> network stack, identifying and eliminating false sharing between
> structures, minimizing lock contention in the file system, 10GigE
> network drivers etc. All of which is done in 'C' and will be for the
> foreseeable future.

That makes sense. I do quite low level stuff as well, even Linux device
drivers and that is not ever going to be done in Ocaml or Haskell :-).

I suppose that is where working for really small startups is so great.
I get to do everything from device driver hacking through to user space
functional programming.

Cheers,
Erik
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 08:44:52AM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> Matthew Macy wrote:
> 
> > I don't anticipate ever doing functional programming professionally
> 
> Why ever not?
> 
> I'm at a small VC funded startup and I use Ocaml and Haskell
> for production code on a regular basis. We have a small but
> growing collection of code written in langauges that are a
> joy to work with and way more robust and debuggable than the
> larger body of C and C++ code we have.

We use OCaml to generate our C code :-)

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Florian Hars]

Erik de Castro Lopo schrieb:
> That makes sense. I do quite low level stuff as well, even Linux device
> drivers and that is not ever going to be done in Ocaml or Haskell :-).

People do use Haskell in developing OS kernels, and you can't get more
low-level than that:

http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/approach.pml

- Florian.

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Florian Hars wrote:

> Erik de Castro Lopo schrieb:
> > That makes sense. I do quite low level stuff as well, even Linux device
> > drivers and that is not ever going to be done in Ocaml or Haskell :-).
> 
> People do use Haskell in developing OS kernels, and you can't get more
> low-level than that:
> 
> http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/approach.pml

The Linux kernel which is the one I am interested in is C only. For
the Linux kernel I very much doubt it is ever going to be possible to
write drivers in Ocaml or Haskell even if that is possible for other
kernels now.

Erik
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/

OCaml and kernels (was: Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring)

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 09:07:23PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> Florian Hars wrote:
> 
> > Erik de Castro Lopo schrieb:
> > > That makes sense. I do quite low level stuff as well, even Linux device
> > > drivers and that is not ever going to be done in Ocaml or Haskell :-).
> > 
> > People do use Haskell in developing OS kernels, and you can't get more
> > low-level than that:
> > 
> > http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/approach.pml
> 
> The Linux kernel which is the one I am interested in is C only. For
> the Linux kernel I very much doubt it is ever going to be possible to
> write drivers in Ocaml or Haskell even if that is possible for other
> kernels now.

Kernel hackers would hate people using any language other than C for
Linux kernel modules.  But that doesn't mean a modified OCaml is a bad
choice for writing a kernel.

It's relatively low-level when you need it to be, and it wouldn't be
too much work to separate out the runtime and reimplement it on top of
baremetal.  It would also be interesting to see if the supposed
massive overheads of garbage collection are in reality better than
bloating every structure with an additional reference count field.

There are some missing features to really make it possible though:

 - inline assembly

 - support for ELF (eg. putting code/data directly into named sections)

 - bit fields / bit twiddling (can probably be done with macros)

 - better optimization of int32 and int64 types

Of the above, inline assembly is the one I'd really like to see added
to OCaml.  And having int32 be optimized to an int on 64 bit
platforms.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: OCaml and kernels (was: Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring)

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

2009/8/18 Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>:
> It's relatively low-level when you need it to be, and it wouldn't be
> too much work to separate out the runtime and reimplement it on top of
> baremetal.

I've done part of this in the past (KOS is not bare metal but a kernel
nonetheless):
 http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2005/01/cf207671ce0efc6bf58f710b230e06e2.en.html

>  It would also be interesting to see if the supposed
> massive overheads of garbage collection are in reality better than
> bloating every structure with an additional reference count field.

I share the same feeling.

There were experiments of implementing kernel functionalities like TCP
stack in ML-like languages, e.g. "A Structured TCP in Standard ML
(1994)" (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.35.8383)
or "A Network Protocol Stack in Standard ML"
(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.8546)

Yours,
d.

Re: OCaml and kernels (was: Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring)

[Philippe Strauss]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 04:21:16PM +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 09:07:23PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> > Florian Hars wrote:
> > 
> > > Erik de Castro Lopo schrieb:
> > > > That makes sense. I do quite low level stuff as well, even Linux device
> > > > drivers and that is not ever going to be done in Ocaml or Haskell :-).
> > > 
> > > People do use Haskell in developing OS kernels, and you can't get more
> > > low-level than that:
> > > 
> > > http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/approach.pml
> > 
> > The Linux kernel which is the one I am interested in is C only. For
> > the Linux kernel I very much doubt it is ever going to be possible to
> > write drivers in Ocaml or Haskell even if that is possible for other
> > kernels now.
> 
> Kernel hackers would hate people using any language other than C for
> Linux kernel modules.  But that doesn't mean a modified OCaml is a bad
> choice for writing a kernel.
> 
> It's relatively low-level when you need it to be, and it wouldn't be
> too much work to separate out the runtime and reimplement it on top of
> baremetal.  It would also be interesting to see if the supposed
> massive overheads of garbage collection are in reality better than
> bloating every structure with an additional reference count field.
> 
> There are some missing features to really make it possible though:
> 
>  - inline assembly
> 
>  - support for ELF (eg. putting code/data directly into named sections)
> 
>  - bit fields / bit twiddling (can probably be done with macros)
> 
>  - better optimization of int32 and int64 types
> 
> Of the above, inline assembly is the one I'd really like to see added
> to OCaml.  And having int32 be optimized to an int on 64 bit
> platforms.
> 
> Rich.

two interesting projects in that direction:

c-- (cminusminus)

bit-c by jonathan shapiro

-- 
Philippe Strauss
http://philou.ch

Re: [Caml-list] Jane Street is hiring (as if you didn't already know)

[Florian Hars]

Erik de Castro Lopo schrieb:
> The Linux kernel which is the one I am interested in is C only.

The kernel I linked to is in C, too (well, 7500 lines of C accompanied 
by 200000 lines of proof that the C actually implements the formal
specification automatically generated from the Haskell prototype).
And it can more or less run Linux as a personality.

- Florian.

Re: OCaml and kernels

[Alexander Danilov]

Richard Jones пишет:
[skip]
> There are some missing features to really make it possible though:
> 
>  - inline assembly
> 
>  - support for ELF (eg. putting code/data directly into named sections)
> 
>  - bit fields / bit twiddling (can probably be done with macros)
> 
>  - better optimization of int32 and int64 types
> 
[skip]

+ out of box support for native executables creation for win32/mingw

+ convenient compiler interface, example - ghc --make main.hs

Because of these two missing features, today I choose sbcl over ocaml to create
small I/O and calculation intensive task, unfortunately.

Re: [Caml-list] Re: OCaml and kernels

[Richard Jones]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 09:43:18PM +0900, Alexander Danilov wrote:
> + out of box support for native executables creation for win32/mingw

Not sure what you mean here, because I've built Win32 native
executables from OCaml using both the INRIA-supplied binaries and our
cross-compiler.  Works perfectly well out of the box.

> + convenient compiler interface, example - ghc --make main.hs

?  ocamlfind?

Anyway, GCC lacks both of these features and yet is still used
to compile the Linux kernel, so I'm not sure what this has to
do with kernels.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Re: OCaml and kernels

[Alain Frisch]

Richard Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 09:43:18PM +0900, Alexander Danilov wrote:
>> + out of box support for native executables creation for win32/mingw
> 
> Not sure what you mean here, because I've built Win32 native
> executables from OCaml using both the INRIA-supplied binaries and our
> cross-compiler.  Works perfectly well out of the box.

I guess Alexander means that ocamlopt requires external tools (assembler 
and linker). This can be an issue since masm/link cannot be 
redistributed (and cannot be found in a standalone package, not embedded 
in a full Visual Studio installation) and some people are reluctant to 
redistribute or install gas/ld (for whatever reason).

FWIW, we faced this problem at LexiFi, so we developed a direct COFF/x86 
backend for ocamlopt (just a straightforward replacement for emit_nt.mlp 
that produces x86 opcodes and put them in a .obj file). This avoids the 
need for an external assembler. We also extended flexlink with a 
stand-alone mode in order to produce DLLs from COFF files without 
relying on an external linker. This is enough to build .cmxs files from 
OCaml code, and this was enough for our needs. To produce an executable, 
more work would be needed on flexlink.


-- Alain