On May 10, 2004, at 12:10 PM, John Goerzen wrote:

> On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 11:50:00AM +0300, Jere Sanisalo wrote:
>> On Sat, May 08, 2004 at 04:37:16PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
>>> However, if you are going to do that, why not just compile the code 
>>> to
>>> native code with ocamlopt and not worry about the C piece?
>>
>> Because ocaml compilers/runtimes do not exist for every platform (say,
>> consoles). And because compiling to C code could allow you to write
>> independent libraries for others to use. It would be nice to release
>> libraries that do a ton of stuff, usable for C/C++ coders, that were 
>> written
>> easily with ocaml. And also some managers seem to trust projects that 
>> are
>> "pure C/C++" much more than projects that use a variable amount of
>> languages.
>
> IMHO, a better approach than generating C output of questionable
> usefulness would be to extend ocamlopt to:
>
> 1. Support those platforms it doesn't yet;
> 2. Support output to .o/.a/.so/.dll files to directly generate

I would personally very much like to see ocamlopt able to generate
shared libraries, both for use directly with Ocaml (eg .cmxso), and
for linking with C programs.

>    C-style shared libraries.
>
> I still don't see the utility of the massive undertaking that would be
> necessary to actually generate full C code from OCaml.  I doubt that
> anyone would be able to maintain that C code directly in any meaningful
> way, which pretty much negates any manager-related benefit.
>
> -- John
>
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