Re: tiny toplevel

[Pierre Weis <Pierre.Weis@inria.fr>]

> Hello,
> 
> I know it is possible to create (specific) toplevels
> by adding some stuff to the original toplevel but...
> is it possible to do the reverse, i.e creating toplevels
> by removing some (supposed) unnecessary libraries/components ??
> 
> By the way, what's the size of the "smallest" possible toplevel 
> (if 'smallest' make sense...) ??
> 
> (why this question ??? well, no particular point but
> think 
>         - about comparing "scripting language" interpreters (size)
>         - about "tiny ocaml" or "embedded ocaml" ...
> )
> 
> [I have no idea about what can be removed from the original toplevel :-)
> just a question
> ]
> Thanks
> -- 
> > Georges MARIANO                 tel: (33) 03 20 43 84 06
> > INRETS, 20 rue Elisee Reclus    fax: (33) 03 20 43 83 59

It is not easy to remove ``unnecessary libraries/components'' from the
toplevel executable program, since you need all the compiler anyway,
in order to ``interpret'' the language. If you want to remove
something, you should probably remove features from the language (for
instance use Caml Light instead of Objective Caml!).

However, a very simple experiment shows that the Caml toplevels are
not extremely big, compared to usual command interpreters:

mouton:/$ ps ug
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
weis      7506  0.1  0.7  1564  904 pts/5    S    14:15   0:00 /bin/bash -i
weis      7546  0.1  1.2  2840 1652 pts/5    T    14:16   0:00 ocamlrun /usr/bin
weis      7656  1.6  0.5  1484  660 pts/5    T    14:17   0:00 camlrun /usr/loca
weis      7665  0.0  0.6  2252  844 pts/5    T    14:18   0:00 perl
weis      7657  0.0  0.6  2500  876 pts/5    R    14:18   0:00 ps ug

Hope this helps,

Pierre Weis

INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/