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

[Stephen Weeks]

> I started documenting the extended API on this page.

I see.  It looks good, except we need to make it clear to users what
is part of our stable release and what is new since then.  I've made a
stab at that.

> 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.

You might like to try mlton.org/WikiTool

> 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?

The C codegen generates architecture-dependent code.  Also, the
runtime contains some architecture-dependent code; see, e.g.,
runtime/basis/Real/class.c.  Porting MLton to Linux on a new platform
is not hard, but it's more than a few hours.  With Debian, there is an
additional bootstrapping problem -- since MLton needs itself to build,
how do we get the initial MLton in there?  I don't know what Barak
(the guy who built the initial MLton Debian package) did for that.
Maybe you just upload the binary and the sources at the same time and
they can build from those.

Anyways, we'd be happy to have you do this.

> > 	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.
...
> 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. :)

Before I go back to him I'd like to confirm that you have successfuly
built MLton on a Debian sid machine.  He said it worked fine on sarge
but not on sid.