gharrma/lang

A programming language built from scratch to experiment with language features, static analyses, and LLVM.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• You will need LLVM (e.g. brew install llvm)

• You will need CMake (e.g. brew install cmake)

• [Optional] For faster builds you can install Ninja (e.g. brew install ninja), then set the environment variable CMAKE_GENERATOR="Ninja"

This project has been tested with

• LLVM 9.0.0
• CMake 3.16.2
• Ninja 1.9.0

Download and build

$ git clone https://github.com/gharrma/lang.git
$ cd lang
$ ./build.sh

Then find the compiler executable at out/langc.

Note that the build.sh script just does the following.

$ cmake -B out # Configures a new build tree.
$ cmake --build out # Builds the compiler.

If you would like a release build, specify -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release in that first cmake command above.

REPL

Invoking the compiler with no arguments launches the REPL, which compiles expressions as you type them. Use a semicolon to tell the REPL you are finished typing an expression. Here is an example.

$ ./run.sh
>>> fn f(a i32, b i32) = a + b;

[parse]
fn f(a i32, b i32) = (a + b)

[ir]
define void @f(i32 %a, i32 %b) {
entry:
  %plus = add i32 %a, %b
  ret void
}

Style Guide

For simplicity we use the Google C++ Style Guide, though only loosely.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Make a pull request or reach out to me at gharrma@gmail.com, and we'll make something happen.