[LLVMdev] Improving OCaml bindings

[Sean Silva]

(readding llvmdev)


On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Peter Zotov <whitequark at whitequark.org>wrote:

> Sean Silva писал 03.11.2013 09:22:
>
>> On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Peter Zotov <whitequark at whitequark.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  Hello folks.
>>>
>>> I'm very interested in improving LLVM's OCaml bindings. I have
>>> several nontrivial patches sitting on llvm-commits for several
>>> weeks, and so far there's been little interest in them.
>>>
>>> Could someone with a good understanding of OCaml please take
>>> a look at these?
>>>
>>> 1) http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1925 [1]
>>>
>>>
>>>    Every other function in OCaml bindings accepts context
>>>    explicitly, would it be a legitimate change to make existing
>>>    functions accept it as well? This would break the API.
>>>
>>
>> I don't really have a good idea of who uses these OCaml bindings
>> API's. A good first step is probably to map out the landscape of the
>> users of the API. Maybe browse research papers? I wouldn't expect to
>> see many OCaml programs "in production" that depend on this API. Also,
>> I'm not sure if we have a stated backwards compatibility policy for
>> this API. Ultimately you probably just want to talk with all the API
>> users you can scrape together.
>>
>
> I've looked through all Google hits by "ocaml llvm". Sadly, there are no
> alive (updated within last 12 months) projects using the OCaml bindings.
> Further, I only found research projects. I guess this means that there
> won't be much impact from breaking the API. I have tried to contact
> some of the authors, though, and I'll write to the OCaml ML.
>
> This leaves another question open: are there any LLVM developers who
> can review OCaml patches?
>

I honestly don't know.

-- Sean Silva


>
>
>> -- Sean Silva
>>
>>
>>  2) http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1926 [2]
>>>
>>>
>>>    I'd like to add garbage collection support to the API
>>>    wherever safe, that's at least DataLayout.t and llmemorybuffer.
>>>    This removes the need for .dispose. I could remove it and break
>>>    the API or print a warning at runtime.
>>>
>>> 3) http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1927 [3]
>>>
>>>
>>>    In order to allow code generation from OCaml, I need to build
>>>    a stub library per configured target. I'm not sure how to
>>>    integrate it with LLVM's build system; my current solution seems
>>>    very ad-hoc.
>>>
>>>    I will update the patch to use Dynlink interface (this is the
>>>    textbook use case for Dynlink), but conceptually this doesn't
>>>    change the problem of interfacing with build system.
>>>
>>> --
>>>   WBR, Peter Zotov.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>>> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu         http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu [4]
>>> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev [5]
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1925
>> [2] http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1926
>> [3] http://llvm-reviews.chandlerc.com/D1927
>> [4] http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
>> [5] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev
>>
>
> --
>   WBR, Peter Zotov.
>
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