[MLton-user] MLton progress report and survey

[Stephen Weeks]

I would like to start 2004 with a report on the MLton optimizing
Standard ML compiler, covering our progress over the last year and our
plans for the future.  If you have any questions about MLton, you can
visit our web page at www.mlton.org or contact the development team at
MLton@mlton.org.

During 2003, MLton grew from 112,204 to 122,299 lines of SML and we
had releases in March and July.  We extended the profiler to support
source-level profiling of time and allocation and to display call
graphs.  We completed the basis library implementation, and added new
MLton-specific libraries for weak pointers and finalization.  We
extended the FFI to allow callbacks from C to SML.  We added support
for the Sparc/Solaris platform, and made many improvements to the C
code generator.

In 2003 we also made substantial progress on a new front end for MLton
that matches the Definition of SML and produces reasonable error
messages.  We plan to include the front end in the next release of
MLton, which will be in a few weeks time.  This release will also
include new integer, real, and word sizes, and a port to the
x86/NetBSD platform.

For 2004, we are considering a number of improvements to MLton,
including: 

  * ports to new platforms (x86/MinGW, PowerPC/MacOS, etc.)
  * a byte-code compiler
  * an interpreter with a read-eval-print loop
  * a space profiler
  * a source-level debugger
  * a tool for unit testing/code coverage
  * a tool for connecting source definitions with uses
  * support for CML
  * support for NLFFI
  * additional SML libraries (hash tables, regexps, etc.)
  * interfaces to other libraries (OpenGL, Gtk, etc.)
  * documentation of compiler internals
  * additional optimizations, especially in data representation

We always like to hear what our users want.  So, we have created a
short survey that will help us to understand the improvements to MLton
that would be most beneficial to our users and to set priorities for
2004.  Please visit the survey at
     
   http://www.mlton.org/survey.html

We would like to hear from those of you who already use MLton and from
those of you who might like to use MLton in the future, but haven't
yet done so for some reason.  Thank you very much for filling it out.

Happy SML programming in 2004.
 
-- The MLton Team