alpha-language-rs

A Rust implementation of the Alpha language polyhedral compilation toolchain: parse → semantic analysis → normalize → generate C.

alphac is the CLI this workspace builds: alphac file.alpha -o file.c.

For the full design rationale (why isl via FFI, workspace layout, licensing, scope) see docs/design.md. For current status, known bugs, and next steps see docs/progress.md. Each crate also has its own README.

Dependencies

• uv, to run prek for pre-commit hooks (see Pre-commit hooks below):

  curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
  

• Rust, via rustup (not a system package manager):

  curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
  source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
  

• isl (>= 0.18) and pkg-config. On macOS:

  brew install isl pkg-config
  

  Homebrew installs pkg-config to /opt/homebrew/bin, which isn't always on PATH in non-interactive shells — prefix commands with export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH" if cargo build reports it can't find isl (the Makefile below already does this for you).
• libclang, for bindgen. On macOS this ships with the Xcode Command Line Tools.
• Barvinok: not required. barvinok/barvinok-sys are stub crates gated behind the off-by-default barvinok Cargo feature.

Linux/macOS only — no Windows support (isl depends on GMP, which complicates static linking on Windows).

Building

make build            # debug build, whole workspace
make release          # optimized build; alphac lands at target/release/alphac

Equivalent plain-cargo commands (see the Makefile for the exact PATH handling):

cargo build --workspace
cargo build --workspace --release

Testing

make test

or cargo test --workspace. Conformance tests read .alpha fixtures bundled in this repo under tests/alpha-language-fixtures/ (copied from the upstream alpha-language repo's tests/**).

Running alphac

cargo run -p alphac -- path/to/file.alpha -o path/to/file.c

Without -o, generated C is printed to stdout.

Other make targets

make check    # cargo check --workspace
make clippy   # cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets
make fmt      # cargo fmt --all
make lint     # uv run prek run --all-files (all pre-commit hooks)
make clean    # cargo clean

Pre-commit hooks

This repo uses prek (a fast, Rust-based reimplementation of pre-commit) to run formatting and lint checks before each commit, managed as a uv dev dependency (see pyproject.toml):

uv sync               # one-time: creates .venv, installs prek
uv run prek install   # one-time: installs the git hook

Hooks then run automatically on git commit. To run them manually against all files:

make lint              # or: uv run prek run --all-files

Configured hooks: cargo fmt --check, cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings, cargo check --workspace, plus standard whitespace/YAML/TOML hygiene checks. See .pre-commit-config.yaml.

License

MIT by default (see each crate's Cargo.toml), matching the upstream isl library. The optional barvinok/barvinok-sys crates are GPL-licensed and feature-gated off by default — nothing in a default build pulls in GPL code. See docs/design.md for the full licensing rationale.