Bootstrapped compiler using only assembly

This repository contains everything necessary to bootstrap a compiler for a C-like language on an arm32 system running GNU/Linux.

Getting started

git clone https://github.com/MrTipson/compiler.git
cd compiler
make

Running a program

Compiling .p1 programs inside test/ can be done using make and the program name without the extension. Any built files end up in bin/ using the original name and the resulting file extensions.

make helloworld
bin/helloworld

Compiling and running arbitrary programs can be done using pipes. Both the p0, and the p1 compiler read from stdin and output to stdout. For p0 compiler errors, check the exit code, while p1 writes to stderr before exiting.

# make sure p0 or p1 is built ('make p0' or 'make p1')
bin/p1 < myprogram.p1 > myprogram.s
as -o myprogram.o myprogram.s
ld -o myprogram myprogram.o
# if you'd like to link syscalls (bin/unistd.o), malloc (bin/stdlib.o) or stdio (bin/stdio.o),
# add them to the ld arguments (and don't forget to build them - 'make').
# 'make programname' links all of them automatically.

Overview

The initial compiler is written using assembly. It defines the language p0, with which a new compiler is bootstrapped. The definitions for p0 and p1 are also available in the docs.

Website

I also made a website where I go more into implementation details.

Troubleshooting

Everything here was coded on a Raspberry pi 2B. If you have a different model, make sure to change the CPU and FPU variables in the makefile. Identifiers for some of the other Raspberry models have been posted on stackoverflow, but i've copied the table here for ease of access. A more comprehensive list for ARM-based systems is available in this github gist.

Raspberry Pi	.cpu	.fpu
Zero, 1 A+, 1 B+	arm1176jzf-s	vfp
2 B	cortex-a7	neon-vfpv4
3 B	cortex-a53	neon-fp-armv8
4 B	cortex-a72	neon-fp-armv8