Mixin modules in a call-by-value setting

Abstract

The ML module system provides powerful parameterization facilities, but lacks the ability to split mutually recursive definitions across modules, and does not provide enough facilities for incremental programming. A promising approach to solve these issues is Ancona and Zucca’s mixin modules calculus CMS. However, the straight forward wayto adapt it to ML fails, because it allows arbitrary recursive definitions to appear at any time, which ML does not support. In this paper, weenrich CMS with a refined type system that controls recursive definitions through the use of dependency graphs. We then develop a separate compilation scheme, directed by dependency graphs, that translate mixin modules down to a CBV λ-calculus extended with a non-standard letrec construct.