[MLton] Debian package (was: Finished (?) MLton.Child)

[Wesley W. Terpstra]

I'll try the version you commited and let you know how it works.

On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 01:21:40PM -0800, Stephen Weeks wrote:
> I added a note to mlton.org/MLtonProcess.

I started documenting the extended API on this page.

However, after being mostly finished with the prose, I hit CTRL-W to copy a
piece of text (ala xemacs) and closed my firefox tab. That was rather dumb.
I will start over tomorrow, in a real editor this time.

> > Btw, why is mlton not built for !i386 in debian? The C target would still
> > work wouldn't it?
> 
> Are you referring to the "Problems" section on
> 	http://packages.qa.debian.org/m/mlton.html

No, I wasn't.
I meant: why is there no mips .deb for mlton, or anything other than i386?

I was surprised by this when I wanted to build a quick SML program for my
wireless router (mips), but apt-get install told me it didn't exist. =)

If you like I can look into this; linux is pretty similar no matter what the
arch, so I can't imagine that it would be too difficult... The C codegen
will work on any platform right? Even if it the output is slow, some mlton 
on all those archs would certainly be better than no mlton.

> 	http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=281807
> If someone on this list can help out, we'd appreciate it.

I have seen a similar problem.

What happens on my laptop is that sometimes mlton spirals out of control
soaking up RAM. The memory access pattern is such that it totally hoses the
machine due to swapping. It becomes impossible to even hit CTRL-C; I waited
an hour the first time for it to get processed, but it never made it.

Nowadays I just turn off swap on my laptop and mlton gets simply killed
when it goes berserk. That way it doesn't take my machine out with it.
My laptop has 512MB of RAM.

However, after my experience with MLton on my athlon64, I think this is
probably due to ... bad RAM! =) I have only seen this behaviour on my laptop
and it only happens some times. It has never happened on the more stable
machines I have access to, and (now that my RAM is fixed) never on my
athlon64.

Whether the person reporting the bug has the same problem or not, I can't
say for certain, but that's what I've seen. Ask him to try rebuilding it a
few times. It might build 1/5 times or so like my athlon+bad RAM. Also, try
another machine. Like I said before, mlton = badass RAM tester. :)

-- 
Wesley W. Terpstra <wesley@terpstra.ca>