[MLton] CM hacking

[Stephen Weeks]

> Here are a things that your proposal does not address that CM does that I 
> will miss in order of most painful omission to least..
> 
>   1. The option to compute dependencies automatically and not list files  in 
> order!

That's certainly a matter of taste, but is not an impediment to
translating between systems, since CM ignores the order of mlb files,
and cmcat can produce the ordering.

>   2. Integration of external tools such as mllex and mlyacc

I think it is a mistake the CM does this.  I agree with you that it
adds a lot of complexity.  The plan for MLton is to leave such
complexity to external Makefiles.

>   3. OS independent names for file path naming
>   4. Conditional compilation

I agree that both of these need to be solved.

> I think the rest of your complaints are issues about the surface
> syntax rather than the the semantics of CM. (i.e. you can still do
> what you want in CM just in an ugly way.) At this point, I stop
> caring because I can probably with a little work parse whatevery
> favoriate syntax you want and build up a CM configuration that has
> the same effect as the syntax for .mlb files.

I don't disagree, but the point of not being "the same as CM" is that
I don't want to have to spend any effort convincing the SML/NJ
developers to put these fixes in, nor wait any time for them do it.

> Anyway, I suspect you are undersetimating how all these extra little details 
>   are going to creap up on you. 

Agreed.

> Okay, I think this conversation has been useful and I understand the 
> direction you want to go in. Anyway, I know what I'm doing this weekend now. :)

Excellent.  My reverse-reverse-reverse psychology has paid off. :-)