MLton

MLton is a whole-program optimizing compiler for the Standard ML programming language.

Features

• Portability. Runs on the following platforms:

  • ARM: Linux (Debian).
  • Alpha: Linux (Debian).
  • AMD64: Darwin (Mac OS X), FreeBSD, Linux (Debian, Fedora, ...), Solaris (10 and above).
  • HPPA: HPUX (11.11 and above), Linux (Debian).
  • IA64: HPUX (11.11 and above), Linux (Debian).
  • PowerPC: AIX (5.2 and above), Darwin (Mac OS X), Linux (Debian, Fedora).
  • PowerPC64: AIX (5.2 and above).
  • S390: Linux (Debian).
  • Sparc: Linux (Debian), Solaris (8 and above).
  • X86: Cygwin/Windows, Darwin (Mac OS X), FreeBSD, Linux (Debian, Fedora, ...), MinGW/Windows, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris (10 and above).

• Robustness.

  • Supports the full SML 97 language as given in The Definition of Standard ML (Revised).
  • A complete implementation of the Basis Library.
  • Generates standalone executables.
  • Compiles large programs.
  • Support for large amounts of memory (up to 4G on 32-bit systems; more on 64-bit systems).
  • Support for large array lengths (up to 2^31 - 1 on 32-bit systems; up to 2^63-1 on 64-bit systems).
  • Support for large files, using 64-bit file positions.

• Performance.

  • Executables have excellent running times.
  • Generates small executables.
  • Untagged and unboxed native integers, reals, and words.
  • Unboxed native arrays.
  • Multiple garbage collection strategies.
  • Fast arbitrary-precision arithmetic based on the GnuMP.

• Tools.

  • Source-level profiling for both time and allocation.
  • MLLex lexer generator.
  • MLYacc parser generator.
  • ML-NLFFIGEN foreign-function-interface generator.

• Extensions.

  • A simple and fast C FFI that supports calling from SML to C and from C to SML.
  • The ML Basis system for programming in the very large.
  • Libraries for continuations, finalization, interval timers, random numbers, resource limits, resource usage, signal handlers, object size, system logging, threads, weak pointers, and world save and restore.

Instructions to build from source

Prerequisites

• GCC 4.1.x or later (or Clang)
• GNU Multiple Precision Library. Check if GMP is already present on your system (whereis gmp libgmp), typically on GCC search path (gcc -v -x c -E -).
• MLton (recommended) or some other SML compiler to bootstrap. The easiest way is to install a pre-built binary package for MLton using your package manager. If using SML/NJ, see Compiling with SML/NJ.

Build instructions

MLton can be built from source using the usual ./configure && make && make install sequence to install under the system default installation directory (typically, /usr/local). Optionally, you can specify the --prefix argument to install MLton into a custom directory.

You can instruct MLton to look for gmp.h outside your include path or for libgmp outside your library search path using --with-gmp-lib and --with-gmp-include configure options, as in:

gzip -cd mlton-*.tgz | tar xvf -

# execute under the extracted directory
./configure \
  --prefix=$HOME/opt \
  --with-gmp-include=/usr/local/include \
  --with-gmp-lib=/usr/local/lib
make
make install

Optionally, you can pass C compiler and linker flags to set MLton's -cc-opt and -link-opt compile-time options via XCFLAGS and XLDFLAGS environment variables:

./configure \
  XCFLAGS='-I/usr/local/include' \
  XLDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib'

If building from source cloned from Github, first generate the configure script (requires GNU Autotools):

autoreconf -vfi
# can now ./configure && make && make check && make install && make clean

To create an archive with a MLton executable:

autoreconf -vfi
./configure && make && make binary-release && make clean
cd .. && ls mlton*.tgz

The archive can be extracted anywhere. The MLton binary can be run with <root>/mlton/bin/mlton (provided the C compiler and the GMP dependency can be found). To uninstall, simply delete the directory containing the MLton installation (<root>/mlton).

To run regression tests on MLton compiled locally in a Docker container, execute ./bin/run-docker.

Resources

For more information, go to the MLton home page.

There are two mailing lists available.

• [email protected] MLton developers
• [email protected] MLton user community

doc (and share/doc) directory contents:

    README                  this file
    changelog               changelog
    cm2mlb/                 a utility for producing ML Basis programs in SML/NJ
    cmcat/                  a utility for producing whole programs in SML/NJ
    examples/               example SML programs
    guide/                  HTML MLton guide (copy of the MLton wiki)
    license/                license information
    mllex.pdf               user guide for mllex lexer generator
    mlton-guide.pdf         PDF version of MLton guide
    mlyacc.pdf              user guide for mlyacc parser generator

Need help? Found a bug?

Submit an issue if you need any help. We welcome pull requests with bug fixes or changes.