Re: [Caml-list] ANN: BER MetaOCaml N104, for OCaml 4.04.0

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

For fast just-in-time compilation of OCaml code, you may be interested
in Benedikt Meurer's work on OCamlJit2 (the article is well-written
and easy to read):

  Just-In-Time compilation of OCaml byte-code
  Benedikt Meurer, 2010
  https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.6223

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 2:18 PM, Eray Ozkural <examachine@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Oleg,
>
> I have a question. Have you ever designed at length how to implement a super
> fast *interpreted* version of metaocaml, or let me put it this way: do you
> think if that is possible at all?
>
> Best,
>
> Eray
>
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 6:20 PM, Oleg <oleg@okmij.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> BER MetaOCaml N104 is a strict superset of OCaml 4.04.0 for ``writing
>> programs that generate programs''.  BER MetaOCaml adds to OCaml the
>> type of code values (denoting ``program code'', or future-stage
>> computations), and two basic constructs to build them:
>> quoting and splicing. The generated code can be printed, stored in a
>> file -- or compiled and linked-back to the running program, thus
>> implementing run-time code optimization. A well-typed BER MetaOCaml
>> program generates only well-scoped and well-typed programs:
>> The generated code shall compile without type errors.
>> Staging-annotation-free BER MetaOCaml is identical to
>> OCaml; BER MetaOCaml can link to any OCaml-compiled library (and
>> vice versa); findlib and other tools can be used with BER MetaOCaml as
>> they are, in their binary form.
>>
>> BER MetaOCaml N104 comes with one minor and two notable improvements.
>> The minor improvement is the availability of the native MetaOCaml.  If
>> the generator is compiled in native mode (using metaocamlopt), the
>> dynamically generated and run code will be natively-compiled as
>> well. The lack of native mode was the most frequently heard criticism
>> of MetaOCaml, although in my experience it hardly even
>> matters. Off-line code specialization seems to be far more prevalent
>> and useful than online one. Anyway, here we have it.
>>
>> The notable new features -- not seen in MetaOCaml (or MetaML, for that
>> matter) -- are generating pattern-matching expression with the
>> statically unknown number of clauses, and let-insertion as a
>> primitive. To wit, |genlet exp| inserts  |let freshname = exp in ...|
>> somewhere in the generated code and returns |.<freshname>.| (unless |exp|
>> is already syntactically a value such as a variable reference).
>> The let-statement is inserted at the most appropriate place.
>>
>> BER MetaOCaml N104 should be available though OPAM, hopefully soon.
>> In the meanwhile, it is available as a set of patches to the
>> OCaml 4.04.0 distribution.
>>         http://okmij.org/ftp/ML/ber-metaocaml-104.tar.gz
>> See the INSTALL document in that archive. You need the source
>> distribution of OCaml 4.04.0, see the following URL for details.
>>
>> For more explanations, please see
>>         http://okmij.org/ftp/ML/MetaOCaml.html
>> as well as ChangeLog and NOTES.txt in the BER MetaOCaml distribution.
>>
>>
>> --
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural, PhD. Computer Scientist
> Founder, Gok Us Sibernetik Ar&Ge Ltd.
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy