[MLton] Windows xll

[Matthew Fluet]

> Is it possible to use mlton create a windows xll/dll?  (An xll is a dll that
> can be loaded Excel.  After being loaded excel can call functions in the dll as
> if they were native functions i.e., defined by excel itself).  I don't mind
> having to write C, C++ code as wrappers for my ml functions.  Lately there was
> some work mentioned on the mailing list on mingw but I didn't follow the
> discussion very closely.  Has this capability been added to mlton?

Making a stand-alone shared library from SML using mlton is not currently
supported.  The _export mechanism should provide sufficient hooks on the
SML side for expressing which functions to export to a shared library, but
the runtime support needs a bit of thought.

The mingw discussion last Nov./Dec. was general support of mingw as a
mlton target platform.  There is no additional functionality there than on
any other platform.

Supporting shared libraries was a project on the annual survey; I don't
know how it rated among other users.  If we were to support it, it would
likely appear first as unix-style shared libraries and then (maybe?) as
Windows DLLs.