Debian version of MLton

[Henry Cejtin]

I want to tell you that the very idea that CVS went in and changed some files
fills me with complete and total disgust for this stupid system.  I AM  going
to  set it up here, but this is incredibly stupid.  That and the fact that it
will not preserve time stamps indicates that it is horrible in my opinion.

As to the 2 makefiles, I figure I will scan through the  changes  and  unless
they  are  bad,  I  would probably go with absorbing them.  The main thing is
that the result is still usable for all of our stuff and doesn't look to bad.

I'm  impressed  that  it made it into the unstable stuff already.  Truly very
fine.

Oh, I was going to ask you about his comment on  making  MLton  (and  how  it
`requires'  MLton  to already be installed).  Please remember to do something
so that MLton can be made no matter what SML compiler  you  have.   I  figure
that  probably  the  easiest way is to just go to a 2-stage compile.  For the
first stage, where you use some unknown SML compiler, you  supply  stubs  for
all  the  MLton  specific features you use (GC, size, timing, etc.)  Then you
use that result in the next stage, using  the  MLton  specific  versions.   I
guess  that this would mean that the save-world thing isn't done in the first
stage.

The result would still be a compiler that is written in MLton instead of SML,
but at least it would be clear how to bootstrap up from SML to MLton.

On  an unrelated note, I mentioned to Rico about the Debian thing and then we
talked for about an hour on how  to  lay  out  code  in  ML  to  satisfy  his
aesthetic  senses.   He  is  thinking  of  using MLton for some serious work-
related stuff, which would be very fine.