Cover

Cover is a safe subset of C++ on the JVM using Graal/Truffle. If you want full C++ support, but don't need memory safety, take a look at Sulong.

FAQ

• How fast is it? For the mandelbrot benchmark Cover reaches 70% of the speed of C. See Performance for details.
• Can I use this for real world projects? No, as only just the parts of C needed to run some toy programs have been implemented.

Design

Cover aims to support the following C++ features:

• standard C++ syntax
• basic types, control flow
• objects and multiple inheritance
• virtual functions
• basic standard library
• basic preprocessor support

Does NOT support the following C++ features:

• delete: everything is garbage collected
• pointer arithmetic and casting to incompatible types
• exceptions

Prerequisites

• JDK 8
• maven3

Installation

• Clone the repository using git clone https://github.com/gerard-/cover.git
• Download Graal VM Development Kit from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oracle-labs/program-languages/downloads
• Unpack the downloaded graalvm_*.tar.gz into cover/graalvm, or add a symlink.
• Verify that the file cover/graalvm/bin/java exists and is executable
• Execute mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-install-plugin:2.5.2:install-file -Dfile=lib/org.eclipse.cdt.core_6.0.0.201607151550.jar -DgroupId=org.eclipse.cdt -DartifactId=cdt-core -Dversion=6.0.0 -Dpackaging=jar
• Execute mvn package

IDE Setup

Eclipse

• Tested with Eclipse Mars SR2
• Open Eclipse with a new workspace
• Install m2e and m2e-apt plugins from the Eclipse marketplace (Help -> Eclipse Marketplace...)
• File -> Import... -> Existing Maven Projects -> Select cover folder -> Finish

Netbeans

• Tested with Netbeans 8.1
• Open Netbeans
• File -> Open Project -> Select cover folder -> Open Project

IntelliJ IDEA

• Tested with IntelliJ 2016.1.3 Community Edition
• Open IntelliJ IDEA
• File -> New -> Project from existing Sources -> Select cover folder -> Click next and keep everything default on several screens -> Finish

Running

• Execute ./cover tests/HelloWorld.cover to run a simple language source file.
• Execute gcc -x c++ -o hello tests/HelloWorld.cover and then ./hello to verify that the cover file is also valid C++.
• Execute ./cover -disassemble tests/SumPrint.cover to see assembly code for Truffle compiled functions.

IGV

• Download the Ideal Graph Visualizer (IGV) from https://lafo.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/pub/idealgraphvisualizer/
• Unpack the downloaded .zip file
• Execute bin/idealgraphvsiualizer to start IGV
• Execute ./sl -dump tests/SumPrint.cover to dump graphs to IGV.

Debugging

• Execute ./cover -debug tests/HelloWorld.cpp.
• Attach a Java remote debugger (like Eclipse) on port 8000.

Further information

• Truffle JavaDoc
• Truffle on Github
• Graal on Github
• Truffle Tutorials and Presentations
• Truffle FAQ and Guidelines
• Graal VM on the Oracle Technology Network
• Papers on Truffle
• Papers on Graal
• Sulong

License

Most of Cover is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. There are some UPL licensed files left from the SimpleLanguage implementation that was used as a base. Those are expected to be replaced soon.