166 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
166 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
Release notes on the MS Windows ports of Objective Caml
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Starting with OCaml 3.01, there are now two ports of Objective Caml
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for MS Windows available:
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- a native Win32 port, built with the Microsoft development tools;
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- a port consisting of the Unix sources compiled under the Cygwin
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Unix-like environment for Windows.
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The Cygwin port requires only free software, runs faster in bytecode
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mode, and provides a more thorough emulation of the Unix library.
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It currently lacks the threads library and the ability to interface
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with COM components via CamlIDL. No graphical user interface to the
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OCaml toplevel is provided.
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The native Win32 port has threads and COM support, but is slower in
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bytecode, does not implement some of the functionality of the Unix library,
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and requires MS Visual C++ version 6 for compilation in -custom mode
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and in native-code mode. A simple graphical user interface to the
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OCaml toplevel is provided.
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The remainder of this document provides more information on both ports.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The Cygwin port of Objective Caml
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---------------------------------
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REQUIREMENTS:
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This port requires the Cygwin environment from Cygnus/RedHat, which
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is freely available at:
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http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/
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Version 1.1 or the upcoming version 1.2 are recommended.
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This port runs under all versions of MS Windows supported by Cygwin,
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i.e. Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 on Intel IA32 machines.
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INSTALLATION:
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The binary distribution is a .tar.gz archive that unpacks in
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usr/local/bin and usr/local/lib/ocaml/. To install, just open
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a "bash" windows and type:
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cd /
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tar xvzf /full/path/to/ocaml-X.XX-cygwin.tar.gz
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Make sure that /usr/local/bin is in the PATH environment variable.
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RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES:
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Just follow the instructions for Unix machines given in the file INSTALL.
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NOTES:
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The libraries available in this port are "num", "str", "unix" and "labltk".
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"graph" and "threads" are not available yet.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The native Win32 port of Objective Caml
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---------------------------------------
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REQUIREMENTS:
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This port runs under MS Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 on Intel IA32
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machines. Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups are not
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supported. Windows NT on non-Intel processors has not been tested.
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The base bytecode system (ocamlc, ocaml, ocamllex, ocamlyacc, ...)
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runs without any additional tools.
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Statically linking Caml bytecode with C code (ocamlc -custom) requires the
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Microsoft Visual C++ compiler version 6. Dynamic loading of DLLs is
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supported out of the box, without additional software.
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The native-code compiler (ocamlopt) requires Visual C++ version 6
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and the Microsoft assembler MASM version 6.11 or later.
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MASM can be downloaded for free from Microsoft's Web site;
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see the comp.lang.asm.x86 FAQ for directions, or
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http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/assembly-language/x86/microsoft.html
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The LablTk GUI requires Tcl/Tk 8.3. Windows binaries are
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available from ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/tcl8_3/.
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INSTALLATION:
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The binary distribution is a self-installing executable archive.
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Just run it and it should install OCaml automatically.
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Installing the command-line tools:
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You must add the "bin" subdirectory of the OCaml installation directory
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to the PATH variable, e.g.
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set PATH=%PATH%;D:\lang\ocaml\bin
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Running directly the tools (e.g. typing D:\lang\ocaml\bin\ocamlc)
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will not work if the "bin" subdirectory is not in PATH, because ocamlc
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and the other tools will be unable to find the Caml runtime system
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ocamlrun.exe.
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The command-line tools assume that the standard library resides in
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C:\ocaml\lib. If you have unpacked it elsehwere, define the CAMLLIB
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environment variable to point to the standard library directory, e.g.
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set CAMLLIB=D:\lang\ocaml\lib
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For Windows 95, 98 and ME, the OCaml installer is able to perform the
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corresponding modifications to AUTOEXEC.BAT (define CAMLLIB and
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append to the PATH variable). For Windows NT and 2000, you'll have to
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edit the environment variables yourself.
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To use the LablTK GUI, the directory where the libraries tk83.lib
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and tcl83.lib were installed (by the Tcl/Tk installer)
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must be added to the library search path in the LIB environment variable.
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E.g. if Tcl/Tk was installed in C:\tcl, add "C:\tcl\lib" to the LIB
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environment variable.
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RECOMPILATION FROM THE SOURCES:
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The command-line tools can be recompiled from the Unix source
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distribution (ocaml-X.YZ.tar.gz), which also contains the files modified
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for Windows.
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You will need the following software components to perform the recompilation:
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- Windows NT or 2000 (the Makefiles do not work under Windows 95, 98, ME
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due to differences between NT and 9x command-line interpreters);
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- Visual C++ version 6
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- MASM version 6.11 (see above)
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- The CygWin port of GNU tools, available from
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http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
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- TCL/TK version 8.3 (for the LablTK GUI) (see above).
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To recompile, first copy manually the files config/m-nt.h and config/s-nt.h
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to config/m.h and config/s.h. Edit config/Makefile.nt as needed.
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Then, use "nmake -f Makefile.nt" to build the system, e.g.
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nmake -f Makefile.nt world
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nmake -f Makefile.nt bootstrap
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nmake -f Makefile.nt opt
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RANDOM NOTES:
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* The VC++ compiler does a poor job on byterun/interp.c. Consequently,
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the performance of bytecode programs is about 2/3 of that obtained under
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Unix/GCC or Cygwin on similar hardware.
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* Libraries available in this port: "num", "str", "threads", "graphics",
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"labltk", and large parts of "unix".
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CREDITS:
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The initial port of Caml Special Light (the ancestor of Objective Caml)
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to Windows NT was done by Kevin Gallo at Microsoft Research, who
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kindly contributed his changes to the Caml project.
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The graphical user interface for the toplevel is due to Jacob Navia.
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