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NAME

       mlton - whole-program compiler for the Standard ML (SML) programming language

SYNOPSIS

       mlton [option ...] file.{c|mlb|o|sml} [file.{c|o|s|S} ...]

DESCRIPTION

       MLton  is  run  from  the command line with a collection of options followed by a file name and a list of
       files with which to compile, assemble, and link with.  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 does not support 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 Basis Library.

       Larger  programs,  spanning  many  files,  may be compiled with the ML Basis system.  In this case, mlton
       foo.mlb will compile the complete SML program described by the basis foo.mlb, which may specify both  SML
       files and additional bases.  See the MLton Guide for details.

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

       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
       number of choices (e.g. {true|false}), the first value listed is the default.

Compile-time options

       -align {4|8}
              Aligns  object  sizes  and  doubles  in  memory  by  the  specified alignment.  The default varies
              depending on architecture.

       -as-opt option
              Pass option to gcc when assembling.

       -cc-opt option
              Pass option to gcc when compiling C code.

       -codegen {native|x86|amd64|c}
              Generate native code or C code.  With -codegen native (-codegen  x86  or  -codegen  amd64),  MLton
              typically compiles more quickly and generates better code.

       -const 'name value'
              Set  the  value  of a compile-time constant.  Here is a list of available constants, their default
              values, and what they control.

              Exn.keepHistory {false|true}
                   Enable MLton.Exn.history.  There is a performance cost to  setting  this  to  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.

       -default-ann ann
              Specify default ML Basis annotations.  For example, -default-ann 'warnUnused true'  causes  unused
              variable  warnings to be enabled by default.  Defaults may be overridden by an annotation in an ML
              Basis file.

       -default-type type
              Specify the default binding for a primitive type.  For example, -default-type  word64  causes  the
              top-level  type  word  and  the  top-level  structure  Word  in  the  Basis Library to be equal to
              Word64.word and Word64:WORD, respectively.  Similarly, -default-type intinf causes  the  top-level
              type  int  and  the  top-level  structure  Int  in the Basis Library to be equal to IntInf.int and
              IntInf:INTEGER, respectively.

       -disable-ann ann
              Ignore the specified ML Basis annotation in every ML Basis File. For example, to see all match and
              unused warnings, compile with -default-ann 'warnUnused true', -disable-ann forceUsed, -disable-ann
              nonexhaustiveMatch, -disable-ann redundantMatch, and -disable-ann warnUnused.

       -export-header file
              Write C prototypes to file for all of the functions in the program exported from SML to C.

       -ieee-fp {false|true}
              Cause the x86 native code generator to  be  pedantic  about  following  the  IEEE  floating  point
              standard.   By  default, it is not, because of the performance cost.  This only has an effect with
              -codegen x86.

       -inline n
              Set the inlining threshold used in the optimizer.  The threshold is an approximate measure of code
              size of a procedure.  The default is 320.

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

       -link-opt option
              Pass 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 pass an option to the linker, you must use gcc's -Wl,
              syntax, e.g., -link-opt '-Wl,--export-dynamic'.

       -mlb-path-map file
              Use file as an ML Basis path map to define  additional  MLB  path  variables.   Multiple  uses  of
              -mlb-path-map  and  -mlb-path-var are allowed, with variable definitions in later path maps taking
              precedence over earlier ones.

       -mlb-path-var 'name value'
              Define an additional MLB path variable.  Multiple uses  of  -mlb-path-map  and  -mlb-path-var  are
              allowed, with variable definitions in later path maps taking precedence over earlier ones.

       -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|count|time}
              Produce an executable that gathers profiling data.  When  such  an  executable  is  run,  it  will
              produce  an mlmon.out file.  The man page on mlprof describes how to extract information from this
              file.

       -profile-branch {false|true}
              If true, the profiler will separately  gather  profiling  data  for  each  branch  of  a  function
              definition, case expression, and if expression.

       -profile-stack {false|true}
              If  true,  the  profiler  will  gather profiling data for all functions on the stack, not just the
              currently executing function.

       -profile-val {false|true}
              If true, the profiler will separately gather profiling data for each (expansive) val declaration.

       -runtime arg
              Pass argument to the runtime system 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.  If the same runtime switch occurs more than once, then the last setting  will
              take  effect.   There  is  no  need to supply the leading @MLton or the trailing --; these will be
              supplied automatically.

              An argument to -runtime may contain spaces, which will cause the  argument  to  be  treated  as  a
              sequence of words by the runtime.  For example, the command line:
                   mlton -runtime 'ram-slop 0.4' foo.sml
              will cause foo to run as if it had been called like
                   foo @MLton ram-slop 0.4 --

              An  executable created with -runtime stop doesn't process any @MLton arguments.  This is useful to
              create an executable, e.g. echo, that must treat @MLton like any other command-line argument.
                   % mlton -runtime stop echo.sml
                   % echo @MLton --
                   @MLton --

       -show-basis file
              Pretty print to file the basis defined by the input program.

       -show-def-use file
              Output def-use information to file.  Each identifier that is defined appears on a  line,  followed
              on subsequent lines by the position of each use.

       -stop {f|g|o|tc}
              Specify when to stop.
                   f    list of files on stdout (only makes sense when input is foo.mlb)
                   g    generated .c and .s files
                   o    object (.o) files
                   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 the MLton Guide for details.

       -target-as-opt target option
              Like -as-opt, this passes option to gcc when assembling, except it only  passes  option  when  the
              target  architecture  or  operating  system is target.  Valid values for target are: alpha, amd64,
              arm,, hppa, ia64, m68k, mips, powerpc, powerpc64, s390, sparc, x86, aix, cygwin, darwin,  freebsd,
              hurd, hpux, linux, mingw, netbsd, openbsd, solaris.

       -target-cc-opt target option
              Like  -cc-opt,  this passes option to gcc when compiling C code, except it only passes option when
              the target architecture or operating system is  target.   Valid  values  for  target  are  as  for
              -target-as-opt.

       -target-link-opt target option
              Like  -link-opt,  this  passes  option  to gcc when linking, except it only passes option when the
              target architecture  or  operating  system  is  target.   Valid  values  for  target  are  as  for
              -target-as-opt.

       -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, plus intermediate compiler passes
                   3  2, plus some data structure sizes

Runtime system options

       Executables  produced  by  MLton  take  command  line  arguments  that control the runtime system.  These
       arguments are optional, and occur before the executable's 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 allowed to have a sequence of @MLton arguments, as in:
            hello-world @MLton gc-summary -- @MLton fixed-heap 10k -- a b c

       Run-time options can also control MLton, as in
            mlton @MLton fixed-heap 0.5g -- foo.sml

       fixed-heap x{k|K|m|M|g|G}
              Use  a  fixed  size heap of size x, where x is a real number and the trailing letter indicates its
              units.
                   k or K    1024
                   m or M   1,048,576
                   g or G    1,073,741,824
              A value of 0 means to use almost all the RAM present on the machine.

              The heap size used by fixed-heap includes all memory allocated by SML code, including  memory  for
              the  stack  (or  stacks, if there are multiple threads).  It does not, however, include any memory
              used for code itself or memory used by C globals, the C stack, or malloc.

       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, which must have been created by  a  call
              to MLton.World.save by the same executable.  See the MLton Guide for details.

       max-heap x{k|K|m|M|g|G}
              Run  the  computation with an automatically resized heap that is never larger than x, where x is a
              real number and the trailing letter indicates the units as with fixed-heap.   The  heap  size  for
              max-heap is accounted for as with fixed-heap.

       may-page-heap {false|true}
              Enable paging the heap to disk when unable to grow the heap to a desired size.

       no-load-world
              Disable load-world.  This can be used as an argument to the compiler via -runtime no-load-world to
              create executables that will not load a  world.   This  may  be  useful  to  ensure  that  set-uid
              executables do not load some strange 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.  Typically x is less than 1, and is used  to  account  for  space  used  by  other
              programs running on the same machine.

       stop   Causes  the  runtime to stop processing @MLton arguments once the next -- is reached.  This can be
              used as an argument to the compiler via -runtime stop to create executables that don't process any
              @MLton arguments.

DIAGNOSTICS

       MLton's  type  error  messages are not in a form suitable for processing by Emacs.  For details on how to
       fix this, see http://mlton.org/Emacs.

SEE ALSO

       mlprof(1) and the MLton Guide.

                                                  June 8, 2010                                          mlton(1)