finiteloop / compiler

Generic scaffolding for an end-to-end LLVM-based compiler

Generic Compiler Scaffolding

This repository is the scaffolding for an end-to-end compiler. It is a useful starting point when developing a new language — taking care of the workflow and wiring typical in most of my personal programming language projects.

To build, check out the repository and execute the following commands:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ cmake -H. -Bbuild
$ cmake --build build --target compiler
$ ./build/compiler

We include LLVM as a submodule.

Features and Dependencies

The compiler is split into four primary directories representing the logical parts of the compiler workflow:

1. parser/ - A parser based on Bison and Flex.
2. checker/ - Placeholder module to check the program for semantic correctness.
3. emitter/ - Backend code generation to LLVM IR.
4. commands/ - A lightweight framework for supporting different compiler commands. Out of the box, the compiler supports the following commands:
   • compiler run - Execute a program using just-in-time compilation
   • compiler build - Generates a binary (optionally cross-compiling for different architectures)
   • compiler check - Checks a program for semantic correctness
   • compiler parse - Checks a program for syntactic correctness
   • compiler ir - Emits the LLVM IR code for a program

Starting Point

The project builds a compiler for a minimal languge that prints the results of simple integer expressions, e.g.,

1 * 3 + (12 % 5)
(2 << 3) / 2

prints

5
8

Author

This scaffolding is used exclusively for personal projects by Bret Taylor ([e-mail]).