Please support PowerPC

[barracuda156]

Description

Legacy SML-NJ builds and works on Darwin PowerPC; it is desirable to have it supported in the new SML-NJ too. I understand that testing may be problematic, so passive support is perfectly fine: allow it to build, and we can do testing in Macports (and work on fixes if something does not work, and then submit PR here).

[JohnReppy]

We have no plans for 32-bit support in the "new" version of SML/NJ, so so it would have to be 64-bit PowerPC support. It will require porting the existing PPC assembly code to 64-bits and creating a 64-bit LLVM backend. These are both doable, but difficult without a machine to test on.

[barracuda156]

@JohnReppy Thank you for responding!

creating a 64-bit LLVM backend

Given that LLVM is broken for Darwin PowerPC, and whether it gets fixed and when is unknown, this looks like a dead end. Assembler could have been doable.

P. S. On a side note, and more of curiosity, why is 32-bit so problematic? Most of the modern code works on 32-bit, despite, I am pretty sure, almost no one actively maintains it.