Helium - A Lightweight Proof of Concept Compiler

A minimal compiler written in C++ that translates Helium source code (.he files) into native ARM64 machine code.

Features

• Tokenization: Lexical analysis that converts source code into tokens
• Parsing: Syntactic analysis that builds an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
• Code Generation: Generates ARM64 assembly code
• Native Compilation: Produces native executables for ARM64 architecture (macOS/Apple Silicon)

Language Syntax

Helium currently supports a minimal set of language constructs:

return (integer_expression);
let variable_name = expression;

Example Program

let x = 7;
return (x);

This declares a variable x with value 7 and returns it as the exit code.

Building

g++-15 -std=c++17 -g src/main.cpp -I src -o build/helium

Usage

./build/helium program.he