[MLton] new release of MLton

[Stephen Weeks]

We are pleased to announce a new release of MLton, the whole-program
optimizing compiler for Standard ML, available at http://mlton.org/.
MLton version 20051202 is the first public release since 20041109.
The major improvements are:

  + The MLton license is now BSD-style instead of the GPL.
  + New platforms: X86/MinGW and HPPA/Linux.
  + Improved and expanded documentation, based on the MLton wiki.
  + Improved foreign-function interface, now with support for ML-NLFFI.
  + New ML Basis annotations.
  + New libraries: ckit library, SML/NJ library.

MLton has the following features.

  + Portability.
   MLton runs on the following platforms.
   o HPPA: Debian.
   o PowerPC: Debian, Mac OSX.
   o X86: Linux, Cygwin/Windows, FreeBSD, MinGW/Windows, NetBSD, OpenBSD.
   o Sparc: Debian, Solaris.
  + Robustness.
   o Supports the full SML 97 language.
   o Follows the Definition of SML closely.
   o Has a complete implementation of the Basis Library.
   o Generates standalone executables.
   o Compiles large programs (hundreds of thousands of lines).
   o Supports large amounts of memory (up to 4G).
   o Supports large arrays (up to 2G elements).
   o Supports large files (using 64-bit integers for file positions).
  + Performance.
   o Executables with excellent running times.
   o Untagged and unboxed native integers and words.
   o Unboxed reals.
   o Unboxed arrays.
   o Multiple garbage collection strategies.
   o Fast arbitrary-precision arithmetic based on the GnuMP.
  + Tools.
   o Source-level profiler for both time and allocation.
   o Lexer generator.
   o Parser generator.
   o ML-NLFFIGEN.
  + Extensions.
   o Fast C FFI for calling from SML to C and from C to SML.
   o ML Basis system for programming in the very large.
   o Libraries for C pointers, continuations, interval timers, random
      numbers, resource limits, resource usage, signal handlers,
      system logging, threads, and heap save and restore.

For more information, go to the MLton home page.

   http://mlton.org/

Enjoy!

-- The MLton Team