<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jun 16, 2007, at 6:03 PM, Stephen Weeks wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">> Sounds like a cool project.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>One tough problem is making 'portable'</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">> runtime systems -- in the implementation of a high-level language, the</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">> compiler and runtime system are usually tightly integrated.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Felix is portable (all of it).</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I think you missed Matthew's meaning of "portable" -- he meant a</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">runtime portable across compilers (i.e. the runtime's clients), not</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">across platforms the runtime runs on.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>That was my point. Ideally, it would be a runtime system that is easy for a compiler to target (or at least for a compiler that thinks the way most modern functional language compilers do). Ideally it'd be something that other compilers could target. I can't imagine a parallel runtime system for something like Haskell or Erlang (or even non-functional typesafe languages like Cyclone or Java) being terribly different from one for ML, at least at a distance. Encoding type information is probably the hardest part of the interface, but even this would be a non-issue if typed assembly languages became common and some standard format was adopted.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The real trouble will come from very nitpicky incompatibilities and issues between different compilers I imagine (for example, the 16-byte C stack alignment issue that was the trouble with Intel Darwin MLton or some similar wierdness)</DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>-- </DIV><DIV>Eric McCorkle</DIV><DIV>Brown University</DIV><DIV>CS Graduate Student</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>