Re: [Caml-list] Google summer of Code proposal

[Seo Sanghyeon <sanxiyn@gmail.com>]

2009/3/21 Andrey Riabushenko <cdome@bk.ru>:
> I would like to develop LLVM frontend to Ocaml language. LLVM  does
> participate in GSoC. LLVM do not mind to developed a ocaml frontend as LLVM
> GSoC project. I want to discuss details with you before I will make an
> official proposal to LLVM.

Very cool!

> I think the best would to way to develop ocaml llvm front end as a part of
> ocaml distribution. I don't not want to develop yet another a separate
> project, which is half-done llvm frontend that nobody uses. There are plenty
> of those for other languages lying around. I propose to forget about JIT
> capabilities of LLVM and concentrate on AOT compilation for now.

This sounds reasonable.

> Ocamlopt currently generates native assembler for the following platforms:
> i386, AMD64, ia64, arm, hppa, alpha, m68k, mips, powerpc, sparc assembler.
> I propose to add LLVM assembler generation as another platform to ocamlopt. It
> requires the least modification of ocaml source and easy to maintain.

One interesting problem may be that LLVM assembler is typed, while other
assemblers are not.

> LLVM
> will give ocaml an aggressive whole program optimizer and will make possible
> to run ocaml on new platforms that are supported by LLVM, but not yet by
> Ocaml.

Is there any such platform?

> 2. Will you merge LLVM platform to the ocaml trunk assuming that it works as
> it should?

I think it should be (assuming you or someone will continue to maintain it),
but I am in no position to answer this.

-- 
Seo Sanghyeon