On Mon, 6 Apr 2009, Rob Arthan wrote:
I am trying to understand what level of binary compatibility I can
expect if I use Poly/ML to create an executable by exporting a function
which calls PolyML.rootFunction to give the users a Poly/ML interactive
session. The users will then update the Poly/ML state, save it and
reload it in later sessions using the functions in PolyML.SaveState.
They will also load state files prebuilt for them.
If I build the executable on system A and create some saved state files
there, how like A does some other system B have to be for the executable
and the saved state files to work on B? I am concerned both about the
compatibility for the saved state files and for the shared object files
libpolyml.so and libpolymain.so. I understand QinetiQ have no problems
moving between systems with Intel hardware and recent-ish slackware and
Fedora operating systems. Would the same files work on my Intel Mac?
While David can probably explain better the true details, I can tell how
we do it for Isabelle.
* We have a portable shell script that invents platform identifiers for
combinations of HW and OS, according to "known equivalences". See
http://isabelle.in.tum.de/repos/isabelle/file/tip/lib/scripts/polyml-platform
* We precompile Poly/ML for these equivalence classes of platforms as
hinted in the README part of http://isabelle.in.tum.de/polyml-5.2.1/
It is important to use a "typical" representative of each platform
equivalence class, neither too old, nor too new (to escape DLL-hell).
* We never "install" Poly/ML in a fixed place, but have a startup script
that modifies LD_LIBRARY_PATH such that all libpoly* component are
found again (on Mac OS this is DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH). Thus everything
can be kept within a single "Isabelle" distribution directory,
although this is not mandatory.
* Images produced by PolyML.SaveState are decorated by the same platform
identifier. Poly/ML appears to require exactly the same executable to
reload such an image.
This homegrown variant of "fat binaries" works quite well across a broad
range of platforms, e.g. see the 7 platforms available via
http://isabelle.in.tum.de/download_x86-linux.html
Only in rare situations, some users with very old Linux installations ever
had to compile themselves.
Makarius
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