A Minimalist Smalltalk Environment implemented in C++ 17
Nyast is a minimalistic Smalltalk environment completely implemented in C++. For this Smalltalk environment we are taking inspiration and some core base class library from Pharo. One of the main objectives of this environment is to have an embeddable solution C++ suitable for usage in environments where JIT compilation is forbidden, such as video games. For this reason, the usage of a JIT is optional, and having a standard ABI and calling conventions for AoT compilation is a desireable capability. A second objective here is to have direct support for multi-threading, which is provided by carefully crafting a minimalistic thread safe core runtime environment.
NyaST can be built with CMake by running the following commands in bash:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .Once nyast is built, the result artifact is provided in the dist folder. Basic evaluation can be tested from the command line with the following bash scripts:
cd build/dist
./nyast -eval "1 + 1"The following matrix describes the current implementation status of nyast:
| Feature Name | Status |
|---|---|
| Large Integer Arithmetic | Not started |
| Smalltalk Parser | Done |
| Smalltalk Compiler | Not started. Basic AST evaluator provided for testing |
| Garbage Collector | Initial implementation done. Full feature testing is missing |
| Optimized GC heap | Not started |
| Bytecode interpreter | Not started |
| JIT compiler | Not started |
| AoT compiler | Not started |