ystar-virtualmachine

A stack based process virtual machine that executes yprime assembly

This project is part of a collection of projects that comprise the ystar project, read more about it here.

Overview

ystar-vm is a process virtual machine that uses stack based memory to run yprime assembly on desktop computers. It stores all data as 32 bit integers and is being written by someone who knows nothing about CPUs.

This individual project is comprised of both the actual virtual machine and a GUI visualiser that displays internal information about the CPU.

There's also a docs folder that might contain more useful information.

Usage

Eventually, I'll build a compiler that can take plaintext yprime assembly or even full ystar code that compiles into bytecode. For now you will have to refer to the instruction table, write the integers in plaintext to a file and use binarypacker.py to encode the base 10 instructions to binary.

./tools/binarypacker.py inputfile bytecode.ybc

To run the bytecode, simply run the VM as follows

./yvm bytecode.ybc

To execute the assembly line by line, use the interactive flag -i

./yvm -i bytecode.ybc

Follow the on screen prompts to step through the code.

Visualiser

Packaged with the virtual machine also is a GUI visualiser. This program displays information such as the progam stack and all stack frames currently allocated. Run the visualiser with the command

./yvmvis bytecode.ybc

Dependencies

• SDL2 (only used by the visualiser)

Compilation

This program uses make with gcc.

Virtual machine

make vm

Visualiser

make vis

Supported Environments

basically just linux but I'll probs also support windows and maybe mac when i feel like it. for now just use wsl lol