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<title>Drawbacks - MLton Standard ML Compiler (SML Compiler)</title>
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      Drawbacks
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MLton has several drawbacks due to its use of whole-program compilation. 
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 Large compile-time memory requirement. 
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   Because MLton performs whole-program analysis and    optimization, compilation requires a large amount of    memory.  For example, compiling MLton (over 140K lines)    requires at least 512M RAM. 
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 Long compile times. 
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   Whole-program compilation can take a long time.  For example,    compiling MLton (over 140K lines) on a 1.6GHz machine takes five to    ten minutes.  
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 No interactive top level. 
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   Because of whole-program compilation, MLton does not provide an    interactive top level.  In particular, it does not implement the    optional <a href="BasisLibrary">Basis Library</a> function <tt>use</tt>. </ul>

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Last edited on 2005-12-02 04:19:39 by <span title="ppp-71-139-183-221.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net"><a href="StephenWeeks">StephenWeeks</a></span>.
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