Whilst Compiler - CAMLE

A port of the University of Bristol CAMLE (Compiler to Abstract Machine for Language Engineering) to a standard Maven project format.

The original CAMLE is a skeleton compiler built on ANTLRv3, and is located in the uk.ac.bris.cs.camle package. It contains an incomplete implementation of a language which I'll call Whilst. Whilst is based on the While language from Principles of Program Analysis (Nielson, Nielson and Hankin).

I have used ANTLR4 and Kotlin to re-implement the compiler. This is in the eu.rossng.camle package. The aims of my implementation were to:

• Minimise complexity (e.g. embedded Java in the ANTLR grammar, functions with side effects)
• Represent the IR tree in a typesafe manner, using classes to represent different kinds of nodes and dispatching methods based on those types (rather than switching on instanceof or tokens)
• Use a 'functional' style for as much of the code as possible
  • It turns out that this is very difficult with ANTLR, which does not allow you to inject custom dependencies into your visitor methods (all you get it the WhilstParser.<Something>Context object)
  • It has become clear that doing this properly requires a language with proper ADTs and pattern matching
  • Because Java/Kotlin don't have these (or the right kind of dynamic dispatch), it's difficult even when you control the implementation of the tree
    • ANTLR uses the Visitor pattern (i.e. double-dispatch) to get around this
    • My IR tree implementation takes inspiration from this article about emulating ADTs in Java. I've updated this approach by using lambdas to make it more terse.
      • But it's not ideal - keeping the interface implementation up to date is fiddly
• Learn Kotlin by using it for all the compiler code
  • It's really good!

Both compilers produce assembly for a modified version of the Jouette architecture described in Modern Compiler Implementation in Java (Appel).

Using the compiler

To run the compiler, you will first need to package it using Maven. A Maven wrapper is included, so you can run:

./mvnw package

The wrapper will download Maven, ANTLR and the Kotlin compiler for you.

Skeleton compiler

Once packaged, you can test the compiler skeleton by running:

 java -jar target/antlr3-camle-jar-with-dependencies.jar -lex src/test/whilst/testsk.w

This executes the uk.ac.bris.cs.eu.rossng.camle.Camle class, asking it to lex the testsk.w test program. The subset of the language in testsk.w is implemented already, so this will output something like:

10 "write"         
7 "("              
9 "'hello world'"  
4 ")"              
8 ";"              
11 "writeln"       
8 ";"              
10 "write"         
7 "("              
6 "0"              
4 ")"              
... etc.

You can also supply other flags - -syn and -irt.

Implemented compiler

Once packaged, you can test the main compiler by running:

java -jar target/antlr4-camle-jar-with-dependencies.jar -cg "src/test/whilst/test7.w"

This executes the main method in eu.rossng.camle, asking it to generate code for the test7.w test program. This program is designed to use all of the language's features.

The output is written to the file /test7.ass (the output name will always match the input filename).

Executing the assembly

The assembly produced by the compilers can be executed using the assmule program. This is included as a binary (the source code is not available), tested with CentOS 6.7. To make it easier to test on any platform, you can use Vagrant. With Vagrant installed, simply run vagrant up to create a CentOS VM, then vagrant ssh to connect to it. cd to the /vagrant directory, where you will find the assmule binary. You can use it as follows:

./assmule out.ass

(where out.ass is the Jouette ASM file you want to assemble and execute)

For more information on the Jouette assembly, see /docs/JouetteArchitecture.md

Future

• Implement optimisations (register allocation, fewer instructions)
• Re-implement in a functional language (OCaml? Haskell?)