Native dynlink on 3.11: a request for packagers

[Dario Teixeira <darioteixeira@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

As you are probably aware, the upcoming 3.11 release includes
Alain Frisch's native dynlink patches.  AFAIK, you cannot
directly dynlink a cmxa or cmx file like you would do in
bytecode with cma or cmo files.  Beforehand, a native code
binary must be made into a plugin via ocamlopt's -shared
option.  The suggested convention [1] is to give these
plugins a cmxs extension:

ocamlopt -shared -linkall -o foobar.cmxs foobar.cmxa

These native code plugins are a prerequisite if one intends
to run Ocsigen in native mode.  Therefore, the life of Ocsigen
users would be greatly simplified if library writers and
packagers (GODI, Debian, Fedora, etc) would add this little
extra step of generating cmxs for each cmxa.  This request
only makes sense for 3.11, of course.

Complementary, META files should also include extra directives
for plugins.  For example:

archive(byte) = "foobar.cma"
archive(native) = "foobar.cmxa"
archive(plugin,byte) = "foobar.cma"
archive(plugin,native) = "foobar.cmxs"

This request can of course become an OSR.  My question is if the
herein contained instructions will still be valid verbatim for
3.11 final.  Will they?  Also, please check the Ocsigen Wiki for
more info on this subject [2].

Best regards,
Dario Teixeira

[1] http://alain.frisch.fr/natdynlink.html
[2] http://www.ocsigen.org/trac/wiki/NativeCodeVersion