## MLton 20241230

# Drawbacks

MLton has several drawbacks due to its use of whole-program compilation.

- Large compile-time memory requirement.

  Because MLton performs whole-program analysis and optimization, compilation requires a large amount of memory. For example, compiling MLton (over 140K lines) requires at least 512M RAM.

- Long compile times.

  Whole-program compilation can take a long time. For example, compiling MLton (over 140K lines) on a 1.6GHz machine takes five to ten minutes.

- No interactive top level.

  Because of whole-program compilation, MLton does not provide an interactive top level. In particular, it does not implement the optional Basis Library function `use`.