Re: [Caml-list] Native executable symtable

From: Ritesh Kumar <ritesh@cs.unc.edu>
To: malc <malc@pulsesoft.com>
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Native executable symtable
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 15:07:04 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <BF986CE8-3B2F-11D9-A20F-000A95CDFBE4@cs.unc.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0411202210230.1123@home.oyster.ru>

Actually malc, it is a bit dissapointing (not on you but on the general 
Ocaml community) that you said that. Before I converted myself into an 
Ocaml programmer I quite vigorously fought with google to find out the 
answer to the very same question your patch addresses. I eventually 
came across some old newsgroup/mail-list postings which said why shared 
libraries are good/bad ideas in Ocaml and what are the pros and cons. I 
know I am not an expert in this field but id does seem that having 
ocaml shared libraries is a big step towards wider deployment ( and 
what's more, perhaps an entire userspace of its own!). I didn't find 
the reasons given against shared libraries very convincing. Among other 
things I value dynamic module linking (during program runtime) as it is 
with languages like Java/C a lot as they give numerous opportunities to 
the programmer.
The patch that you have developed is a good step forward. I think it 
has a lot of utility and it should be part of the main opt compiler.

Ritesh

--
Impossibility is a relative concept.

On Nov 20, 2004, at 2:17 PM, malc wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Alex Baretta wrote:
>
>>>> What does this patch do? I clicked on the link but could not make 
>>>> any sense out the page you referenced.
>>> I don't know how to put it more bluntly than that (already on the 
>>> page):
>>> <quote>
>>> What is it?
>>> A patch, against OCaml 3.07, making it possible to: create, link 
>>> against and dynamically load shared objects on i386 ELF and Win32 
>>> platforms.
>>> </quote>
>>
>> I read this, but I don't see how this differs from the behavior of 
>> vanilla Ocaml. I commonly use shared-object libraries in my code, and 
>> the Ocaml compiler can generate DLLs out of libraries for use within 
>> C code. The problem addressed by ASMDynlink dynlinking Ocaml compiled 
>> code within a running native code application. What has Vitaly's 
>> patch to do with this?
>
> Keyword here is "for use within C code", this patch is "for use within
> OCaml code", also adressing name mangling, shared GC and runtime. 
> Additionally it Natdynlink module is introduced (Natdynlnk mimics the
> behaviour of Dynlink, but works with natively compiled OCaml shared
> object). A little bit of research on the page would have (like, for
> instance, getting the examples provided or reading README) would have
> given you just as much information.
>
>>
>> I also don't understand your sarcasm.
>
> Sarcasm spurs from the fact that first version of this patch was
> introduced in 2001 and developed till 2003. I had hoped that this will
> result in some reaction, if not from Inria developers then from OCaml
> users, alas this was not the case. Nothing w.r.t. native shared object
> and/or dynamic linking of native code has changed since then. I myself
> asked and waited for something akin to this for a bit, then decided to
> went ahead and did it on my own, big mistake, all signs are there that
> people do not need this functionality bad enough to do anything.
> So be it.
>
> -- 
> mailto:malc@pulsesoft.com
>
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