Re: Ocaml back-end

[Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>]

On 09-12-2008, Gilles Pirio <gilles.pirio@gmail.com> wrote:
>> To my mind, the best way is to provide a patch through the bug tracking
>> system of INRIA. This is highly probable that INRIA team doesn't accept
>> it directly but ask you to justify/modify it in order to fit the whole
>> compiler -- which could be quiet a long process in fact.
>
> It would greatly help to know what the INRIA team would consider as
> acceptable ahead of doing the work. What kind of guidlines would you
> advise me to follow? I guess I can add new passes but can I modify
> existing ones?
>
> The ideal solution would be to open the back-end using the dynlink
> library. I've done it with 3.11 to speed up development. The back-end is now
> a cmo file. I separately compile copt0.cmo, copt1.cmo... with different
> back-ends. Then I can use command like: ocamlopt -copt copt0.cmo myfile.ml
> to compile with my back-end.
> But even though that's a small change I'm not sure the INRIA guys would
> like it, right?
>
>

This idea rocks! The best way is to begin by providing a basic patch and
follow this explanation:
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/how-to-supply-code-to-open-source-projects/
(even if it is not said, half of the people involved are OCaml
developers).

The other idea is that the smallest is the best. That's why your idea
rocks. If the possibility to dynamically load backend is small, it will
be a very good first step.

When you will have made this first step (that can profit to all), you
can either submit your backend or provide it by any other mean.

Regards
Sylvain Le Gall

ps: consider fecthing a copy of the CVS 
http://camlcvs.inria.fr/