Re: [Caml-list] LLVM OCaml bindings

[Peter Zotov <whitequark@whitequark.org>]

Jeff Meister писал 12.11.2013 07:44:
> Aside from compatibility with existing code though, I can't imagine
> why any OCaml programmer would want to use a type-unsafe version of
> the LLVM bindings. The C API gets a pass for flattening LLVM's deep
> inheritance hierarchies into opaque pointers like llvalue and lltype,
> since that's all C lets you do. But that's just not acceptable to me
> in OCaml, where I have the tools to correct the situation. If I have
> to give up static type safety to work with LLVM in OCaml, then I might
> as well not use OCaml on that project.

Speed? :) Actually, OCaml has much more type safety than C or bindings
of LLVM to dynlangs (Ruby, etc). Ruby bindings didn't even check if I
pass lltype where llvalue is expected, and there was no easy way to do
it.

> If the Haskell bindings expose more capabilities than the OCaml ones,
> it would be great to add these additional functions. But I'm curious,
> how are they getting additional functions? Can Haskell bind directly
> to C++ without going through C? Or have the Haskell folks made major
> changes to the LLVM C API? And if so, why wouldn't they push those
> changes upstream themselves?

They wrote their own C wrappers using the C++ API. I'm currently 
pushing
them upstream, slowly. Haskell folks probably didn't do that because 
it's
somewhat of a pain if you're not an LLVM committer.

> 
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 3:31 AM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> 
> wrote:
> 
>>> I'm not going to change APIs in any way which needs nontrivial, 
>>> significant fixes to clients, there's simply no need.
>> 
>> Ok, great.
>> 
>> Jeff Meister was talking about writing more type safe bindings. I 
>> think that would be fine as long as it wraps the existing less-safe 
>> bindings so people can continue to use them. I tried using LLVM from 
>> Haskell and had a lot of problems because they'd used every trick in 
>> the book to write the most type safe possible bindings and it makes it 
>> much harder to learn and use. I'd personally much rather see more 
>> complete bindings...
>> 
>> BTW, what are your thoughts on MSJIT? I just started reading about it 
>> and it seems very underwhelming. Sounds like they're struggling to 
>> refactor their C++ code so they're reinventing things but not doing it 
>> significantly better. So I don't think I'll be rushing to switch to 
>> MSJIT unless they actually deprecate the old JIT.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Jon.
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Zotov [mailto:whitequark@whitequark.org]
>> Sent: 08 November 2013 10:19
>> To: jon@ffconsultancy.com
>> Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
>> Subject: RE: [Caml-list] LLVM OCaml bindings
>> 
>> Jon Harrop писал 08.11.2013 13:36:
>>> I just wanted to check: you're not breaking the existing bindings,
>>> right?
>> 
>> Sorry, realized the previous letter was phrased ambiguously.
>> I'm asking because I do want to break existing bindings. The changes 
>> would mainly touch two areas:
>> 1) Memory management. I want to get rid of most or all of dispose 
>> functions and allow to use OCaml's GC.
>> 2) Llvm_target interface is very outdated and it could be updated to 
>> integrate much better with the TargetMachine interface.
>> 
>> There are also two or three Llvm functions which need minor changes.
>> 
>> I'm not going to change APIs in any way which needs nontrivial, 
>> significant fixes to clients, there's simply no need.
>> 
>> --
>>    WBR, Peter Zotov.
>> 
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> 
> 
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-- 
   WBR, Peter Zotov.