README.md

Compiler Utilities: Make Fragments

This directory contains the implementation of a tool for converting source-code fragments contained in source files to string literals in an SML structure that are suitable for use by the code templates library.

Usage

Program to generate a file "fragments.sml" containing a fragments structure from a CATALOG file. A CATALOG file has the following layout

 <structure name>
 <input file>    <fragment name>
 <input file>    <fragment name>
 ...
 <input file>    <fragment name>

The resulting file (named fragments.sml) will contain a structure with the given name; the structure consists of named fragments. Two kinds of input files are supported. If the input file has a ".in" suffix, then it is converted to an SML literal string in the output file. If it has a ".json" suffix, then it is parsed as a JSON value (see the SML/NJ JSON library) and the resulting value in the output will be SML code that defines the corresponding JSON.value value.

Wrapper scripts

When in a compiler, I typically wrap the SML program with scripts that run the MkFrags.mkFragments and MkFrags.mkMakefile functions with the appropriate arguments. When using SML/NJ, I just compile the program each time I run it as follows:

#!/bin/sh
#
# wrapper script for MkFrags.mkFragments function
#

PROG=mkfrags

if [ $# != 1 ] ; then
  echo "usage: $PROG.sh <dir>"
  exit 1
fi

DIR=$1

SRC=/path/to/make/fragments/source/sources.cm

sml $SRC 2> /dev/null 1>/dev/null <<XXXX
MkFrags.mkFragments "$DIR";
XXXX
exit $?

For MLton, I add a Makefile to compile an executable (see main.sml), and run make in the wrapper script to avoid the slow compile times of MLton.