xnning / fcore

Research middleware compiler from System F-based languages to Java with the Imperative Functional Object encoding

F2J: A Compiler for FCore

Building from Source

The following instructions should work on any platform, from OS X to Ubuntu. It builds the compiler from source, thus may take some time.

1. Make sure you have installed the dependencies:

   • Install the Haskell Platform
   • Java SDK (8 or newer)
   • Apache Ant (version 1.8 or above)

2. Clone the source with git:

   git clone https://github.com/hkuplg/fcore.git
   cd fcore

3. Build and install:

   cabal update
   make

4. After the installation, invoking f2j in your console will show its usage. If not, you probably want to add .cabal/bin to your $PATH.

Building on Windows

1. Software preparation

   • Java SDK (8 or newer)
   • Apache Ant (version 1.8 or above)
   • git
   • minGHC, which includes GHC, Cabal, MSYS
   • Have a make. There is a make in minghc\msys\bin. Or one can use GNU Make

2. Then the same as above.

Documentation

See doc directory for more details.

Compilation Methods

F2j has a few built-in compilation methods (by default, it doesn't use any optimization), namely apply, stack and unbox.

• Apply: multi-argument optimization
• Stack: tail call elimination
• Unbox: auto-unboxing optimization

To use one or more of them, simply append the compilation methods you want to use as the command line arguments.

For example, say you want to use the apply method, running the following command:

f2j -m apply some_file

If you want to combine different methods (say, apply and stack), just type:

f2j -m apply -m stack some_file

Finally, passing -r flag will make the compiler compile and run the generated Java code.

REPL

There is also a REPL at your service. Simply invoking f2ji will take you to the REPL.

Examples

In the example directory, you will see a lot of example programs written in FCore. You may want to take a look at them to get familiar with the syntax. These examples demonstrate different features of our compiler, such as call-by-name, record syntax, modules, thunk, type synonyms, etc.

Particularly, in examples/fractals, there is an interesting program that draws a fractal.

Troubleshooter

If you run into any problem, try to do

make clean

and then

 make

If the problem persists, create an issue!

License

BSD 3

See LICENSE at the top-level directory for details.