> I'm surprised the compiler goes straight to assembly, rather than targeting LLVM (most native programming languages)

Most native programming languages historically don't, and OCaml predates LLVM by a good 7 years.

> or C- (what GHC does/did)

Cmm is an intermediate language specific to GHC before the backend[1], GHC's default backend is a native generator.

[1] or more precisely "an other" intermediate language, since there's also Core.

There's an OCaml LLVM backend [1]. The author found a number of issues with LLVM [2] although this could be overcome. The real problem is that the low-level object format is completely different which would break all OCaml extensions written in C (eg. any extension that links to an external C library). Plus the current code generators are really fast and cover all common architectures anyway so there's not much point.

[1] https://github.com/colinbenner/ocamlllvm

[2] http://oud.ocaml.org/2012/abstracts/oud2012-paper7.pdf

Most compilers target LLVM? That doesn't sound right. Maybe most compilers written in the last five years or so.

Why? Ocaml was around long before LLVM, and GHC has a mode where you can emit assembly (and one where you can emit LLVM as well).

> , rather than targeting LLVM (most native programming languages)

Native languages targeting LLVM are the exception not the norm. The vast majority of native compilers do emit assembly.

[1] http://llvm.org/ProjectsWithLLVM/

FYI, it's C-- (not C-): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--

Why? Going to llvm constrains you to do llvm's models. (Also, the timing issue mentioned by a sibling.)

You might be surprised to learn that there are languages that are agnostic in what they target.