MLton runs on a variety of platforms and is distributed in both source and binary form.

A .tgz or .tbz binary package can be extracted at any location, yielding README.adoc (this file), CHANGELOG.adoc, LICENSE, Makefile, bin/, lib/, and share/. The compiler and tools can be executed in-place (e.g., ./bin/mlton).

A small set of Makefile variables can be used to customize the binary package via make update:

  • CC: Specify C compiler. Can be used for alternative tools (e.g., CC=clang or CC=gcc-7).

  • WITH_GMP_DIR, WITH_GMP_INC_DIR, WITH_GMP_LIB_DIR: Specify GMP include and library paths, if not on default search paths. (If WITH_GMP_DIR is set, then WITH_GMP_INC_DIR defaults to $(WITH_GMP_DIR)/include and WITH_GMP_LIB_DIR defaults to $(WITH_GMP_DIR)/lib.)

For example:

$ make CC=clang WITH_GMP_DIR=/opt/gmp update

On typical platforms, installing MLton (after optionally performing make update) to /usr/local can be accomplished via:

$ make install

A small set of Makefile variables can be used to customize the installation:

  • PREFIX: Specify the installation prefix.

  • CC: Specify C compiler. Can be used for alternative tools (e.g., CC=clang or CC=gcc-7).

  • WITH_GMP_DIR, WITH_GMP_INC_DIR, WITH_GMP_LIB_DIR: Specify GMP include and library paths, if not on default search paths. (If WITH_GMP_DIR is set, then WITH_GMP_INC_DIR defaults to $(WITH_GMP_DIR)/include and WITH_GMP_LIB_DIR defaults to $(WITH_GMP_DIR)/lib.)

For example:

$ make PREFIX=/opt/mlton install

Installation of MLton creates the following files and directories.

  • prefix/bin/mllex

    The MLLex lexer generator.

  • prefix/bin/mlnlffigen

    The ML-NLFFI tool.

  • prefix/bin/mlprof

    A Profiling tool.

  • prefix/bin/mlton

    A script to call the compiler. This script may be moved anywhere, however, it makes use of files in prefix/lib/mlton.

  • prefix/bin/mlyacc

    The MLYacc parser generator.

  • prefix/lib/mlton

    Directory containing libraries and include files needed during compilation.

  • prefix/share/man/man1/{mllex,mlnlffigen,mlprof,mlton,mlyacc}.1

    Man pages.

  • prefix/share/doc/mlton

    Directory containing the user guide for MLton, mllex, and mlyacc, as well as example SML programs (in the examples directory), and license information.

Hello, World!

Once you have installed MLton, create a file called hello-world.sml with the following contents.

print "Hello, world!\n";

Now create an executable, hello-world, with the following command.

mlton hello-world.sml

You can now run hello-world to verify that it works. There are more small examples in prefix/share/doc/mlton/examples.

Installation on Cygwin

When installing the Cygwin tgz, you should use Cygwin’s bash and tar. The use of an archiving tool that is not aware of Cygwin’s mounts will put the files in the wrong place.