Standard ML of New Jersey

This is the main development repository for SML/NJ. We are currently reworking many components of the system, so it is not very stable. For most uses, we recommend the legacy version of the system.

As of the 2023.1 release, this version is known to work on AMD64 (a.k.a. x86-64) hardware running Linux or macOS.

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Contents

• Building From Source
• Recompiling the System

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Building From Source

The process for building the system from source code has changed.

1. clone the repository

   git clone git@github.com:smlnj/smlnj.git

2. cd to the cloned repository and get the boot files

   cd smlnj
   curl -O https://smlnj.org/dist/working/$VERSION/boot.amd64-unix.tgz

   where $VERSION is the version that you are building (e.g., 2023.1).

   We plan to incorporate this step into the build.sh script in the near future.

3. build the installation

   ./build.sh

   Use build.sh -h to see the list of options accepted by the build script.

   As before, you can modify the config/targets file to add/remove components from the build.

After successful running of the build.sh script, bin/sml will be the interactive system.

Recompiling the System

The process of recompiling the system from source code is fairly similar to before.

1. Switch to the system directory and run the cmb-make command:

   cd system
   ./cmb-make ../bin/sml

   The "../bin/sml" argument is optional; if omitted, then the sml command in the user's PATH will be used. Once can also specify a different path to an sml command, when appropriate.

2. Bootstrap the system

   ./makeml

3. Install the system

   ./installml -clean -boot

   The -boot option is new (and optional); it causes the existing boot files in the root directory (e.g., boot.amd64-unix.tgz) to be replaced by the files generated by the cmb-make command.

4. Rebuild the libraries and tools

   cd ..
   ./build.sh