MLton/mlton

Health v2 · maintenance only

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Adoption not part of the score

1091 stars · 138 forks observed · 2026-09-03

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

MLton is a whole-program optimizing compiler for the Standard ML (SML97) programming language that generates small, fast standalone executables. It includes a complete Basis Library implementation, language extensions, a C FFI, lexer and parser generators, and a profiler.

Use cases

• compile Standard ML programs to fast native executables
• build statically linked SML binaries
• port SML/NJ code to MLton
• generate lexers and parsers for SML with mllex and mlyacc
• profile SML programs
• call C libraries from Standard ML via FFI
• do arbitrary-precision arithmetic in SML with GMP-backed IntInf

When to choose

• you need the fastest runtime performance for Standard ML code
• you want standalone or statically linked executables with no runtime dependencies
• you need full SML97 compliance and a complete Basis Library implementation
• you want aggressive dead-code elimination and small binaries

When to avoid

• you need fast incremental compilation or interactive REPL-style development
• compile-time memory usage or whole-program compile times are a concern for very large projects
• you need a different language than Standard ML

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

compiler programming-language parser cli developer-tools compilers programming-languages developer-tools windows bsd cross-platform cli standard-ml sml sml97 whole-program-optimization functional-programming mllex mlyacc profiler ffi gmp command-line linux macos

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