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4  Manual page

MLton is run from the command line with a collection of options followed by a file name and a list of files to compile, assemble, and link with.
mlton [option ...] file.{cm|sml|c|o} [file.{c|S|o} ...]
The simplest case is to run mlton foo.sml, where foo.sml contains a valid SML program, in which case MLton compiles the program to produce an executable foo. Since MLton has no notion of separate compilation, the program must be the entire program you wish to compile. However, the program may refer to signatures and structures defined in the SML basis library.

For developing large programs spanning many files, MLton supports a limited subset of SML/NJ Compilation Manager (CM) files. For example, mlton foo.cm will compile the complete SML program consisting of the concatenatation of all the SML files referred to (either directly or indirectly) by foo.cm. See Section 9 for details.

4.1  Compile-time options

MLton's options allow you to control the name of the output file, the verbosity of compile-time messages, and whether or not certain optimizations are performed. They also allow you to specify which intermediate files are saved and to stop the compilation process early, at some intermediate pass, in which case compilation can be resumed by passing the resulting files to MLton. MLton uses the input file suffix to determine the type of input program. The possibilities are .cm, .sml, .c, and .o.

With no arguments, MLton prints the version number and exits. For a usage message, run MLton with an invalid switch, e.g. mlton -z. In the explanation below and in the usage message, for flags that take a boolean argument {true|false}, the first value listed is the default. For example, by default, overflow checking on is performed on integer arithmetic.


-align {4|8}
 
Aligns object sizes and doubles in memory by the specified alignment. On X86, the default is 4 and on Sparc the default is 8.

-cc-opt option
 
Pass the option to gcc for compiling C code. This is only useful when compiling -native false.

-detect-overflow {true|false}
 
This flag controls whether or not overflow checking is performed on integer arithmetic, in particular on Int.{+,-,*,~,div,quot}.

-exn-history {false|true}
 
Enable Exn.history. See Section 8.2.5 for details. There is a performance cost to -exn-history true, both in memory usage of exceptions and in run time, because of additional work that must be performed at each exception construction, raise, and handle.

-export-header {false|true}
 
This flag is useful for programs that use _export expressions (see Section 5.2). It causes MLton to print to standard output a C header file with prototypes for all of the functions exported from SML.

-ieee-fp {false|true}
 
Control whether or not the native code generator is pedantic about following the IEEE floating point standard. By default, it is not, because of the performance cost. This has no effect with -native false.

-inline n
 
Set the inlining threshold used in the optimizer. The default is 320.

-keep {g|o|sml}
 
Save intermediate files. If no -keep argument is given, then only the output file is saved.
g generated .S and .c files passed to gcc and the assembler
o object files
sml SML file


-link-opt opt
 
Pass the option to gcc when linking. You can use this to specify library search paths, e.g. -link-opt -Lpath, and libraries to link with, e.g. -link-opt -lfoo, or even both at the same time, e.g. -link-opt '-Lpath -lfoo'. If you wish to pash an option to the linker, you must use gcc's -Wl, syntax, e.g., -link-opt '-Wl,--export-dynamic'.

-native {true|false}
 
Controls whether or not to use native code generation, as opposed to generating C and using gcc. With native code generation, MLton typically compiles more quickly and generates better code.

-output file
 
Specify the name of the final output file. The default name is the input file name with its suffix removed and an appropriate, possibly empty, suffix added.

-profile {no|alloc|time}
 
Produce an executable that will gather allocation or time profiling information. When such an executable is run, it will produce an mlmon.out file. See Section 6 for details.

-profile-stack {false|true}
 
If true, the profiler will count the time spent (or bytes allocated) while a function is on the stack.

-runtime arg
 
Pass argument to the runtime via @MLton. The argument will be processed before other @MLton command line switches. Multiple uses of -runtime are allowed, and will pass all the arguments in order.

-safe {true|false}
 
This switch determines the value of the SML variable MLton.safe, which controls whether the basis library performs array, string, and vector bounds checks, division for zero checks, and other checks. Compiling -safe false changes the behavior of some programs, does not conform to the basis library specification, and may cause programs to seg fault.

-show-basis {false|true}
 
If true, the compiler displays the basis library and exits.

-show-basis-used {false|true}
 
If true, then the compiler prints out the types, values, signatures, structures, and functors from the basis library that the input program uses, and then exits.

-stop {f|g|o|sml}
 
Secify pass to stop at.
f list of files on stdout (only makes sense when input is foo.cm)
g generated .S and .c files
o object file
sml SML file (only makes sense when input is foo.cm)
tc after type checking

If you compile -stop g or -stop o, you can resume compilation by running mlton on the generated .c and .S or .o files.

-target {self|...}
 
Generate an executable that runs on the specified platform. The default is self, which means to compile for the machine that MLton is running on. To use any other target, you must first install a cross-compiler. See Section 12.

-type-error {concise|full}
 
Whether to display concise or more verbose error messages.

-verbose {0|1|2|3}
 
How verbose to be about what passes are running. The default is 0.
0 silent
1 calls to compiler, assembler, and linker
2 1 + intermediate compiler passes
3 2 + some data structure sizes

-warn-match {true|false}
 
Whether or not to display nonexhaustive and redundant match warnings.

4.2  Runtime system options

To control the runtime system, executables produced by MLton take several optional command line arguments before their usual arguments. To use these options, the first argument to the executable must be @MLton. The optional arguments then follow, must be terminated by --, and are followed by any arguments to the program. The optional arguments are not made available to the SML program via CommandLine.arguments. For example, a valid call to hello-world is:
hello-world @MLton gc-summary fixed-heap 10k -- a b c
In the above example, CommandLine.arguments () = ["a", "b", "c"]. It is also allowed to have a sequence of @MLton arguments, as in:
hello-world @MLton gc-summary -- @MLton fixed-heap 10k -- a b c
Here are the allowed options.
fixed-heap n[km]
 
Use a fixed size heap of n bytes. A trailing k means that n is in units of 1024 bytes. A trailing m means that n is in units of 1,048,576 bytes. If neither appear, then n is in bytes. A value of 0 means to use almost all the RAM present on the machine.

gc-messages
 
Print a message at the start and end of every garbage collection.

gc-summary
 
Print a summary of garbage collection statistics upon program termination.

load-world world
 
Restart the computation with the file specified by world. The world file must have been created by a call to MLton.World.save by the same executable. See Section 8.2.27 for details.

max-heap n[km]
 
Run the computation with an automatically resized heap that is never larger than n. The meaning of [km] is the same as with the fixed-heap option.

no-load-world
 
Disable load-world. Can use this with the -runtime compiler switch to prevent executables from loading a world.

ram-slop x
 
Multiply x by the amount of RAM on the machine to obtain what the runtime views as the amount of RAM it can use.
These options can also control the compiler, as in
mlton @MLton fixed-heap 100m -- foo.sml

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