acha@CS.CMU.EDU (Anurag Acharya) (06/25/91)
sml2c is a Standard ML to C compiler. It compiles an extended version of
SML to portable C. The extensions include first-class continuations,
asynchronous signal handling, separate compilation and a facility to
freeze and restart programs. It is based on the Standard ML of New Jersey
(SML/NJ) implementation (version 0.67) and shares its front-end and most of
the runtime system. sml2c is a batch compiler and compiles only module-level
declarations, i.e. signatures, structures and functors. It provides the same
pervasive environment for the compilation of these programs as SML/NJ. As a
result, module-level programs that run on SML/NJ can be compiled by sml2c
without any changes. It does not support SML/NJ style debugging and profiling.
Support for profiling may, however, be added in future.
sml2c is easily portable and has been ported to IBM RT, Decstation 3100,
Decstation 5000, Omron Luna 88k, sun-3, sun-4 and a 486-based machine
(running Mach). The generated code is highly portable and makes very few
assumptions about the target machine or the C compilers available on the
target machine. The runtime system, which it shares with the SML/NJ
has several machine and operating system dependencies. sml2c has eliminated
some of these dependencies by using portable schemes for garbage collection
and for freezing and restarting programs.
sml2c has been developed at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
University as a part of research into portable implementations of properly
tail-recursive languages with first-class continuations. The design of
sml2c has been described in the technical report
David Tarditi, Anurag Acharya, Peter Lee, "No Assembly required: Compiling
Standard ML to C", School of Computer Science, Carngie Mellon University.
CMU-CS-90-187.
This technical report is available with the distribution as
doc/sml2c/paper/paper.ps. The distribution also contains
"A Guide to SML2C" (doc/sml2c/manual/manual1.{dvi,ps}) which contains
information for installation and usage.
sml2c is written in SML and the distribution contains both the source sml
files and their C versions (generated by sml2c itself). The distribution
also contains a set of tests and sample programs in the directory
tests. The source for the test programs is available in tests/src.
Input files for the test programs are contained in tests/input and the
canonical output files are contained in tests/canon.
doc/smlnj/exmaples contains some more sample programs.
sml2c is available by anonymous ftp from dravido.soar.cs.cmu.edu
(128.2.220.26). The compressed tar file sml2c.tar.Z can be found in
/usr/nemo/sml2c. Note that the local ftp software will allow you to
change directory only to /usr/nemo/sml2c. In particular, it will not
allow you to change directory to /usr/nemo. This is a feature and not
a bug. The size of the tar file is about 3 Meg. The uncompressed distribution
is about 12 Meg.
contact addresses:
david.tarditi@cs.cmu.edu
anurag.acharya@cs.cmu.edu
peter.lee@cs.cmu.edu