This archive/directory contains a binary distribution of Mosml.NET, a
port of Moscow ML v2.0 to .NET by Niels Jørgen Kokholm
(kokholm@itu.dk) and Peter Sestoft (sestoft@dina.kvl.dk). This
distribution should be considered an alpha release.

Please consult http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~sestoft/mosml/ for information
on Moscow ML.

Mosml.NET has been developed and tested mainly on a pc with MS .NET
Framework SDK 1.0 SP1 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/) and
running MS Windows XP Pro. Mosml.NET might work with just an MS .NET
Framework 1.0 redistributable installed or with the version 1.1 SDK
but that has not been tested. As of this writing, the batch compiler
can be run under Mono (http://www.go-mono.org) and many programs
compiled with Mosml.NET will run under Mono. The interactive
system does not run under Mono yet.

CONTENTS of this distibution:
============================
  
 README.BIN : this file
 
 bin/ : 

  Contains the executables mosmlnet.exe, mosmlnetc.exe and
  mosmlnetlex.exe, corresponding to Moscow ML's mosml, mosmlc and
  mosmllex commands. There is no mosmlnetyac, but the the parsing
  support in Mosml.NET is compatible with files generated by the
  C-based mosmlyac from Moscow ML 2.0. The directory also contains a
  number of support assemblies, Mosml.xxx.dll, with the actual code of
  the compiler, libraries etc.

 lib/ :

  Contains the signature files (.sig) and compiled signatures (.ui)
  for the parts of the Moscow ML library ported so far. It also
  contains two files for installing the support assemblies into the
  global assembly cache, gaci.bat and gaciall.bat. Moreover the
  interactive help database helpsigs.val. Currently, the following
  libraries from Moscow ML 2.0 is missing in Mosml.NET: Regex, Socket,
  Dynlib, Gdbm, Gdimage, Mysql, Polygdbm, Postgres, Signal, Unix and
  Callback.

 doc/ :

  Contains the user's manual and internals paper as pdf files and the
  html library documentation.

RUNNING Mosml.NET:
=================

To install Mosml.NET, You just need to unpack this archive to your
local hard disk (Mosml.NET will not run from a network drive if you
use the default security configuration the .NET Framework). You may
choose to add the bin subdirectory to your execution PATH.

The startup time of the batch compiler and interactive system will be
quite substantial unless you install the above mentioned support
assemblies into the global assembly cache and precompile them with the
"ngen" utility of the MS .NET SDK. This can be achieved conveniently
by running the "lib\gaciall.bat" script. You may need to be logged in
as an administrator to successfully run the script. WARNING: the
"gaciall.bat" script will remove *every* assembly with a name matching
Mosml.* from the global assembly and ngen caches before installing new
versions (we doubt anyone would want to run several versions of
Mosml.NET side by side).

The interactive system mosmlnet.exe and the batch compiler
mosmlnetc.exe support almost the same command line formats as mosml
and mosmlc from Moscow ML 2.0. If you do not supply the "-stdlib" flag
or use "-P none", you must supply the path to the lib directory in the
environment variable MOSMLNETLIB.

By default the batch compiler will create a .il file to be assembled
by the MS .NET SDK ilasm utility. You may create an assembly directly
by adding the "-rtcg" flag to the command line. By default, the
compiled file will be in .exe format, but you can create .dll and
.netmodule format files with the flags "-target dll" respectively
"-target netmodule". The compiled files willuse the Mosml.Runtime.dll
support assembly and normally also Mosml.Library.dll; preferably
loadable from the global assembly cache, alternatively by copying the
support assemblies to the directory of the compiled file.