Ethereal
A simple, dynamically typed, interpreted, generic programming language.
Prerequisites
- GCC/Clang with full C++ 11 support, tested with:
- Ubuntu >= 14.04 (GCC >= 4.8.4, GMP >= 5.1.3)
- Arch Linux (GCC 9.1.0, GMP 6.1.2)
- macOS 10.14.6 (Homebrew LLVM 8.0.1, Apple LLVM 10.0.1, Homebrew GMP 6.1.2)
- Android 9 - Pie (Termux - clang 8.0.0, GMP 6.1.2 manually compiled - see the note below)
- GMP library with CXX support (will be almost always built with support for CXX in your official distribution package)
Note that GMP on Termux for android does not come with CXX support, hence it will have to be manually compiled from source with the --enable-cxx configure option. You may also need to specify the PREFIX directory using --prefix configure option which, for me, is /data/data/com.termux/files/usr
The entire command sequence for installing GMP on android (for me) is: ./configure --prefix /data/data/com.termux/files/usr --enable-cxx && make -j8 && make install
About
Visit the medium article: Here for an overview of my journey with it :)
The language syntax is inspired from Python and C. It contains sufficient features to enjoy working with it, but avoids complex features like OOP.
Ethereal does use a concept of member functions which are actually nothing but plain functions bound to a particular struct/type. And they allow the use of self to use the calling variable inside the function itself.
One can easily make extensions for the language in the form of language modules or c++ dynamic libraries (if high performance is needed). See the existing modules for more information about it (language modules: include/ethereal/, C++ standard modules: modules/std/).
Documentation is under development and will take some time to build, but till then, feel free to go through the Code Samples and hack around with the programs in the tests directory.
Installation
Once the prerequisites are met, just execute the bootstrap.sh script. It will build the language interpreter along with the stdlib modules, and install them to your PREFIX directory if it is set, or to the repository directory itself.
Note that if you use PREFIX, you may need root access depending on the directory you choose.
The following items will be installed:
- buildfiles/et -> PREFIX_DIR/bin/
- buildfiles/lib*.so PREFIX_DIR/lib/ethereal/
- include/ethereal/* PREFIX_DIR/include/ethereal/
Also, the interpreter code internally uses PREFIX to locate the lib and include directories, so you will have to rebuild the codebase if you change PREFIX and then install.
Contributions are definitely accepted and greatly appreciated.