doc/guide/src/RunningOnNetBSD.adoc

   1 RunningOnNetBSD
   2 ===============
   3
   4 MLton runs fine on http://www.netbsd.org/[NetBSD].
   5
   6 == Installing the correct packages for NetBSD ==
   7
   8 The NetBSD system installs 3rd party packages by a mechanism known as
   9 pkgsrc. This is a tree of Makefiles which when invoked downloads the
  10 source code, builds a package and installs it on the system. In order
  11 to run MLton on NetBSD, you will have to install several packages for
  12 it to work:
  13
  14 * `shells/bash`
  15
  16 * `devel/gmp`
  17
  18 * `devel/gmake`
  19
  20 In order to get graphical call-graphs of profiling information, you
  21 will need the additional package
  22
  23 * `graphics/graphviz`
  24
  25 To build the documentation for MLton, you will need the addtional
  26 package
  27
  28 * `textproc/asciidoc`.
  29
  30 == Tips for compiling and using MLton on NetBSD ==
  31
  32 MLton can be a memory-hog on computers with little memory.  While
  33 640Mb of RAM ought to be enough to self-compile MLton one might want
  34 to do some tuning to the NetBSD VM subsystem in order to succeed.  The
  35 notes presented here is what <:JesperLouisAndersen:> uses for
  36 compiling MLton on his laptop.
  37
  38 === The NetBSD VM subsystem ===
  39
  40 NetBSD uses a VM subsystem named
  41 http://www.ccrc.wustl.edu/pub/chuck/tech/uvm/[UVM].
  42 http://www.selonen.org/arto/netbsd/vm_tune.html[Tuning the VM system]
  43 can be done via the `sysctl(8)`-interface with the "VM" MIB set.
  44
  45 === Tuning the NetBSD VM subsystem for MLton ===
  46
  47 MLton uses a lot of anonymous pages when it is running. Thus, we will
  48 need to tune up the default of 80 for anonymous pages.  Setting
  49
  50 ----
  51 sysctl -w vm.anonmax=95
  52 sysctl -w vm.anonmin=50
  53 sysctl -w vm.filemin=2
  54 sysctl -w vm.execmin=2
  55 sysctl -w vm.filemax=4
  56 sysctl -w vm.execmax=4
  57 ----
  58
  59 makes it less likely for the VM system to swap out anonymous pages.
  60 For a full explanation of the above flags, see the documentation.
  61
  62 The result is that my laptop goes from a MLton compile where it swaps
  63 a lot to a MLton compile with no swapping.