'Good news everyone' patch

The patch itself [4a_shared.patch.gz 46k]
Ported to OCaml 3.07 by Vitaly Lugovsky, so all your credits are belong to him.[*]

What is it?

A patch, against OCaml 3.07, making it possible to: create, link against and dynamically load shared objects on i386 ELF and Win32 platforms.

What's new (in 4a) compared to 4_fix

Patch is now against OCaml 3.07
No testing whatsoever on Win32

What's new (in 4) compared to 3a_fix

Patch is now against OCaml 3.06
Win32 support (Native tools only)
Reworked much of registration/deregistration code
(It wasn't correct before, hopefully it is now)
Limited backtrace support for native code
Removed CamlP4 modifications
(Patch is way to big already, besides it wouldn't work on windows)
Added some examples

Release notes can be found here

Installation

mkdir scaml
cd scaml
wget OCaml 3.07
wget patch
tar xvfz ocaml-3.07.tar.gz
zcat 4a_shared.patch.gz | patch -p0
cd ocaml-3.07
Read platform notes and issue appropriate commands

You are all set now.

Examples

Here [examples.zip 8k]

Problems

Under Linux linking against shared objects created with Shared OCaml requires GNU Binutils 2.12(or later)
Currently only works on Linux i386 and Win32.
The code is not well tested
Slightly slower compilation times(not noticeable on my machine)
Slightly bigger executables
Somewhat bigger intermediate assembly output
Possibly slower run times
More issues with Win32 than i care to mention
Documentation (lack of it)

Other platforms

In theory this should work on all platforms with sufficiently smart dynamic linker and ld that can omit copy relocations: GNU ld(i386-elf, ia64-elf) with '-z nocopyreloc', SUN's linker with -b.

Feedback

Send comments, suggestions, flame to malc@pulsesoft.com or moosotc@gmail.com

Vitaly's patch verbatim

here [ocaml7beta-shared4new.patch.gz 34k]

Previous patches

Fourth (4 [4_shared.patch.gz 34k], 4_Fix [4_fix_shared.patch.gz 3k] [*]), for OCaml 3.06
Third (3a, 3a_fix) Second First

4_fix_shared is small patch against 4_shared(ie not standalone). It fixes two problems(Coq should build now), no new features introduced. It has recieved even less testing than 4_shared, you have been warned.

Malcy

Last modified: Wed Oct 1 16:19:26 MSD 2003