generz
!
Node.js CI 
A programming (?) language that generates code for building compilers.
---
Preface
Compilers have various architectures. The
most common one is building a pipeline, consisting in some phases, where output of one phase is the input for the next phase. Compilers are commonly separated in
front-end (source language dependent) and
back-end (source language independent):
- Front-end
- Lexical analysis
- Syntax analysis
- Semantic analysis
- Back-end
- Intermediate code generation
- Code optimization
- Target code generation
The
de facto standard for the
back-end implementation is the
LLVM project.
Meanwhile, as the
front-end is source language dependant, it's implementation is generally coded (manually written and/or partially generated) by the compiler's developers.
---
Description
The purpose of
generz is to generate
highly-optimized code\
, that implements specific lexical and syntax analysis
phases, AKA code that accepts input source (sequence of characters) and emits AST (Abstract Syntax Tree), leaving to the developers of a compiler to implement just the semantic analysis
and interact with the intermediate code generation*.
The behavior of the generated phases is described with the
Generz Language (
.erz source files).
\
As highly-optimized code* is intended that kind of code that sacrifices readability in favor of performances, reducing everything to a low-level of abstraction and builds an API that should be considered as a magical black box, that transform the input in the proper output.
---
Project status
TLDR: The
generz compiler is capable of generating code (in TypeScript) that validates sources in a custom syntax. AST is not _yet_ built from the generated code.
> Generated code for TypeScript, why? Because
generz itself is written in TypeScript and one of the first things it should do is generating code for itself. Obviously the next targets are C++ and Rust.
The following steps would be:
$3
Design the language so that is becomes capable of building AST from the derivation-tree, using user-defined data structures of the target programming language.
$3
At this point, with some minor feature implementations,
generz will be capable of producing code for its own use, and therefore run on code produced by itself.
$3
- Migration to
Deno
- Support for
context-sensitive grammar
- Output code generation for C++
- Output code generation for Rust
- Output code generation for any language (via plugin)
---
Generz language
TBD. Some drafts and ideas. But language is evolving fast, nothing stable or worth to be documented yet.
---
Installation
_Node.js v16+_ is required to install/run
generz. You can check which version it's installed on your system (if any):
``
shell
node --version
`
If it's not installed you can obtain _Node.js_ in different ways:
- using nvm [recommended]
- directly download and install the binaries from https://nodejs.org/
Once node
(and therefore npm
) is installed on your system you can install generz
:
`
shell
npm install --global generz
`
---
Testing
Every piece of code in this repository is unit-tested. To run the tests clone the repository on your local machine and run:
`
shell
npm install
npm test
``
> Prepare yourself for some fancy experience on your shell.
---
Contributions
Any contribution is welcome, even just a star ★ on
Github repository.