Questions & Answers about Objective Caml

Table of contents

• The big picture
  What is Objective Caml?
  Should I switch from Caml Light to Objective Caml?
  Objective Caml still does not conform to Standard ML, does it?
  How do Objective Caml modules compare with Standard ML's?
  How hard is it to convert code from Objective Caml 2.0 to 3.0?
  How hard is it to convert code from Objective Caml 1.0 to 2.0?
  How hard is it to convert code from Caml Special Light to Objective Caml?
  How hard is it to convert code from Caml Light to Objective Caml?
  
• Portability
  Which platforms are supported by Objective Caml?
  What about MSDOS and MS Windows?
  What about the Macintosh?
  What about other operating systems?
  Are bytecode files portable across platforms?
  
• Programming environment
  How do I debug Objective Caml code?
  How do I profile Objective Caml code?
  What happened to all the contributed Caml Light libraries and tools?
  
• Programming problems and weird error messages
  Can I have two mutually recursive compilation units / structures / functors?
  How do I express sharing constraints?
  Compilation units are forced to be structure. What if I want to make aunit with a functor or a signature instead?
  It says this expression has type t but is here used with type t. I'm confused. Isn't this the same type?
  What is this business about type variables that cannot be generalized?
  
• Making code run fast
  I want my code to run fast. How should I write functions with several arguments?
  Should I use local functions to factor out invariant parameters of a recursive function?
  I hope the compiler inlines small functions, because I have zillions of them
  What is most efficient: recursive functions (functional style) or loops with references (imperative style)?
  Any garbage collector settings I should be aware of?
  I'm interested in numerical programming. Any efficiency hints?
  Do you blow Standard ML of New Jersey's socks off?
  What speedup should I expect from the native-code compiler, compared with the bytecode compiler? From the bytecode compiler, compared with Caml Light 0.7?
  You mean there are programs that run only twice as fast when going to native code? Isn't this a ridiculous speedup?
  

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Author: Xavier Leroy -- Last modified: 2001/03/10