Re: [Caml-list] Linear Scan Register Allocator for ocamlopt/ocamlnat

[Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com>]

On Aug 1, 2011, at 17:29 , Wojciech Meyer wrote:

> Hello Benedikt,

Hello Wojciech,

> It's also worth to note that there is some generic mid/back-end code ready, in my OCaml native compiler framework called DragonKit in a spirit of LLVM, which I am currently actively working on. It's already able to express a toy language and JIT compile and run it within the same process on top of x86 architecture:
> 
> The code includes:
> - SSA based IL using polymorphic variants
> - monadic code generator
> - plugable passes using first class modules
> - very ad-hoc register allocator
> - X86 backend
> - example that evolved from LLVM kaleidoscope ported to DragonKit to Pascal/ML like language, and another example using direct translation to X86 backend.
> 
> The code is functorised and almost purely functional (with few exceptions where there is no benefit of doing that).
> 
> Maybe it could have some use in your new toplevel, or maybe it would be worth to reuse some of your work in DragonKit (or viceversa).
> 
> I welcome anybody wanting to join me in this effort.
> 
> Please take a look at:
> 
> www.github.com/danmey/DragonKit

I doubt that this would be applicable in the context of ocamlopt. What we are heading for is simply a way to avoid the external as and ld invocations by doing the work in-process. Code generation is done already, we just replace the last phase (see emit.ml).

BTW: On a related note, we also have a student working on a LLVM backend for ocamlopt as part of his bachelor thesis, which may be related to what you do.

> Cheers;
> Wojciech

greets,
Benedikt