[MLton] Windows port of MLton using the Microsoft tools (e.g.without MinGW)

[Matthew Fluet]

I'd like to suggest that we not let this thread of discussion drift too 
far from its original topic.  That is, let us stick to technical issues, 
rather than philosophic issues.  Let us take it as given that:

  1) There are pragmatic reasons for using the MS toolchain rather than the
     GNU toolchain, not least of all that the one exists (and the other
     does not) for 64-bit versions of the Windows operating systems.

  2) There is no a priori reason that MLton (the compiler) could forgoe
     using any of the Posix.* structures from the Basis Library, and
     instead use only the (portable) OS.* structures.  Nonetheless, many
     portions of MLton's implementation of the Basis Library are built up
     from the Posix.* structures/functions.  It would be a non-trivial (but
     not impossible) amount of work to change this.


I know that John Skaller has in the past made it clear that Felix 
generates portable C/C++ as a backend.  What useful advice can you pass 
on: Do you fall back to C89 for the MS toolchain?  Is that difficult? 
Are there other 'compromises' that need to be made to support the MS 
toolchain?  Do you ever generate assembly code?  What are the pitfalls 
there?