JASL - Just A Scripting Language

STATUS: IL generation finished. Polishing the compiler.
UPCOMING: Quality-of-life tweaks, bugfixes, perhaps "extern" functions

JASL is a statically typed, low-level(!) and byte-compiled scripting language backed by JASM and CSR. JASL is written in the Effekt research language and is compiled into JASM IL. The rest is done by the JASM Assembler and Linker and CSR.

Since it is backed by JASM and CSR, JASL can call C ABI compatible functions with a specific signature (given in CSR documentation). So as long as you provide a clean wrapper for JASL to call, native calls are completely possible.

Since CSR is havign problems with native callbacks, they are not possible yet. Call it WIP.

JASL looks and feels like Zig/C and allows you to use raw pointers, pointer arithmetic and unsafe actions. However these are all done on VM level, the pointers are not "real" pointers so it's all safe to mess up. CSR is completely sandboxed (not if on JIT (perhaps depends on CSR implementation)) and (hopefully) crash-free.

JASL is semi-object oriented, I think. Custom types (called "layouts") can be defined and "methods" can be attached to them. However there is no inheritance, interfaces etc. so you'll have to create vtables manually if you want to mimic such behaviour.

Here's a simple "Hello World" program written in JASL:

module main

include "io"

fn main() -> void {
    io::println("Hello World");
}

If you want more complicated examples, you can check the JASL stdlib under lib/jasl/. It is still WIP, simple but complex enough.

Quickstart

Building From the Source

The cleanest way to get JASL is to build it from source, currently Windows/Mac builds are unsupported and/or untested. The compilation speed depends on the performance of the Effekt compiler, the language that JASL compiler is written in.

Prerequisites

• Builds are only tested on a Linux machine, Windows/Mac builds/crossbuilds are not supported.
• Ninja Makefiles 1.11+
• Effekt 0.58+
• C++20 and C17 compatible compilers (I used gcc/g++, you might need to tweak the ninja files otherwise)
• LLVM 15

The Effekt version must be exactly the same for a smooth experience. Since it is a research language I can't promise for any kind of backwards compatibility.

Building

git clone https://github.com/ysufender/JASL
ninja -f release.ninja

OR

git clone https://github.com/ysufender/JASL
ninja -f debug.ninja

The resulting binaries will be written to $SOURCEDIR/build/<configuration>/

Setting Up the Environment

One of the resulting binaries is jasl_install, which is a compile-time hardcoded executable for managing jaslc executable and stdlib paths. The compiler relies on jasl_install to detect the stdlib path, and will error out if it can't find it on the path.

Here is the helper text of the current jasl_install:

JASL Installation Manager 0.1.0

Usage:
        jasl_install [install <symlink_dir>|uninstall <symlink_dir>|--version|--stdlib]

install will create symlinks for jaslc and jasl_install under the given directory uninstall will remove the symlinks from the given directory version will print the JASL version as usual stdlib will print the JASL stdlib path

You can use install to create symlinks under any directory that is included in path, such as /usr/local/bin or something, then use jaslc and jasl_install freely.

Basic CLI Usage

Here is the helper text from the current version of JASL:

The JASL Compiler
        Version: 0.1.0-debug
        Usage:
        jaslc <input_file> [flags]
                Flags:
                --help                  : print this help message

                --typecheck             : do not compile or assemble, typecheck only
                --compile               : do not assemble, generate IL only

                --static                : build a static library
                --dynamic               : build a dynamic library

                --release [jit = false] : build in release mode, with optional jit support. defaults to false.

                --output <file_name>    : set output file name
                --working <file_name>   : set working directory

                --check-nullptr         : enable nullptr check on every pointer operation

                --include <dir_path>    : include the given directory as a search path

Language and Project References

See this for language reference and that for project reference.