Re: Porting caml (and coq) to HP/UX.

Re: Porting caml (and coq) to HP/UX.

[emmanuel]

[ Note du mode'rateur:
  Several people ask for a Caml V3.1 version on HP machines.
  The ports for HP used to be done by the LIENS at Ecole Normale
  Supe'rieure. That's why Emmanuel Chailloux tells us now what should
  be done for Caml V3.1 on HP machines.

  Pierre Weis.
]

Hello,

We have no plan to port the Caml V3.1 distribution to the HP9700 

(snake) for the following reasons :

first : We have not an HP-9700 computer at the LIENS (Laboratoire
        d'Informatique de l'Ecole Normale Superieure).

second : Caml V3.1 uses the Le_Lisp V15.2x runtime, but
         this Le_Lisp version doesn't exist for the snake. Only
         the GELL version of Le_Lisp runs for the HP9700. This
         version translates directly the instructions of the 
         abstract machine to C code. It doesn't use the dynamic 
 	 loader  of the Le_Lisp V15.2x, which is necessary for Caml.

third : The Caml-light 0.5 distribution has been tested on 
	the HP9700.

In conclusion, porting Caml V3.1 to the snake is not a trivial 
work, because it is necessary to port Le_Lisp 15.2x (an old version)
to the snake, and to modify the dynamic loader because Caml uses an  
hacked version of this loader. And because Caml-light exists for the  
snake, may be it is easier to port Coq to Caml-light (Coq-light)   
than to port Caml V3.1 to the HP9700.

Emmanuel Chailloux...

Re: Porting caml (and coq) to HP/UX.

[Francis Dupont]

[ Note du mode'rateur :
 In his last message Emmanuel Chailloux wrote: ]

=> Sorry but it is not possible to port an interactive version of CAML
(the full one) on Snake architecture because there is no Le_Lisp runtime
producing directly runnable code for this architecture.

You have three choices :
 - port the Le_Lisp runtime (*not* easy, very expensive and nobody wants
to do that...) on Snake architecture or develop a byte-code version
(no so stupid !)
 - use only non-interactive (i.e. batch...) version of CAML, throwing
away the toplevel loop
 - use Caml-Light who has a byte-code interpreter (note: there is no
really usable byte-coded version of the Le_Lisp runtime)

Francis.Dupont@inria.fr

PS : you have or will have the same problem for all the new RISC architectures
(DEC Alpha, MIPS R4000, Intel Pentium, ...)