[Caml-list] Native Win32 Ocaml with Visual C++ toolkit

[Alain.Frisch@ens.fr]

Hello caml-list,

This is a report on my attempt to make ocamlopt work with the C compiler
from the (free of charge) Visual C++ toolkit.

The toolkit can be downloaded from:

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

It contains the C compiler and the MS linker.

Then you need to find the Microsoft Assembler:
despite all the information found on the page

[2] http://users.easystreet.com/jkirwan/pctools.html

I couldn't find a way to fetch the ML.EXE and ML.ERR files.
First, the URl for the Visual C++ processor pack (which
contains MASM) download page is now:

[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/tools/ppack/download.aspx

According to [2], it would be enough to run the install program,
and find the ML.EXE/ML.ERR files somewhere on the disk while the
program complains that VC++ is not installed (when you click Ok,
the program would erase the files). Unfortunately, I couln't find
the temporary files on my disk. Maybe the latest versions are less
stupid.

At that point, the ML.EXE/ML.ERR files arrived magically on the hard
drive, probably because of a worm, or some security hole in OE.


Two .LIB were still missing: advapi32.lib and uuid.lib. I could
find them in the Microsoft Core SDK. To download this SDK, you can follow
the link "Microsoft Windows Platform SDK" from [1]. The download is
around 200 Mb and the SDK takes 500 Mb after installation. You need
only the two tiny files advapi32.lib and uuid.lib.


So, finally, except the Visual C++ toolkit itself, you only need 4 files:
ml.exe, ml.err, advapi32.lib and uuid.lib. And you can compile your
favorite hello.ml with ocamlopt. I still haven't found an official way to
get ml.exe and ml.err.


-- Alain

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