Re: [Caml-list] Ocaml 4.02.0: Dead Code Elimination and Core

[Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>]

On 2014/09/04 17:03, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 02:14:28PM +0100, Jeremie Dimino wrote:
>> Hi Christopher,
>> 
>> On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Christopher Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I saw that there is dead code elimination in 4.02.0 and I thought to
>>> myself that this would help make Core's very large binaries smaller.  So, I
>>> switch compilers and did a test.  Unfortunately, a small sample program
>>> compiled with ocamlopt and using Core.Std.List was still 11MB.  I very much
>>> doubt that my binary really needs to be 11MB.  Is there a way to shrink the
>>> size?  I had heard about namesapces elsewhere before but I think that
>>> discussion died.
>>> 
>> 
>> AFAIK 4.02 doesn't do much more dead code elimination than 4.01. There is
>> an entry about dead code elimination in the changelog but it is a local
>> optimization that is unlikely to change the size of binaries much.
>> 
>> However there is a new feature of 4.02 that will help reduce the size of
>> binaries using Core: module aliases. Core will have to be updated to take
>> advantage of it. We are hopping to release a new version of Core using
>> module aliases soon.
> 
> Could you (or someone else) give an example of how to use module
> aliases? Core isn't the only library that would benefit from this and
> a good example would help getting started converting to it.
> 
> Note: an example using oasis would be the best. :)
> 
> MfG
> 	Goswin

I just gave a presentation at the ML workshop about that.
There is no oasis code, but the slides explain well how to call the compiler,
and the impact on dependencies.

http://www.math.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/papers/index.html

Jacques