[Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlnat 0.1.0 release

[Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlnat 0.1.0 release

[Benedikt Meurer]

Dear list,

This post announces the 0.1.0 release of the ocamlnat project, which aims to provide a native code toplevel for the OCaml language, that is mostly compatible to the byte code toplevel, but up to 100 times faster.

Home page: http://benediktmeurer.de/ocamlnat
Forge page: https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/ocamlnat
GitHub page: https://github.com/bmeurer/ocamlnat

Current features:
- Support for x86 and x86-64 processors running Unix-like systems (tested with Linux and Mac OS X), and experimental support for Win32.
- Mostly compatible with the byte code toplevel `ocaml`, although some functionality is not provided (yet), i.e. tracing does not work.
- Includes an implementation of the linear scan register allocator for increased performance (default is currently the old graph coloring register allocator for well-known stability).
- Separated from the OCaml distribution, can be installed in addition to an existing OCaml 3.12.1 installation.
- Experimental Findlib support, provides a mostly working Topfind interface similar to what Findlib provides for the byte code toplevel.

Open issues:
- Better Findlib integration; packages should install .cmxs files for loading into the native toplevel. Any ideas/help welcome.
- Porting to additional architectures (ARM, PowerPC).
- Windows port.


Benedikt Meurer