M2C — A C-hosted Modula-2 to C Translator

Welcome to the M2C Modula-2 to C Translator and Compiler Project

Objective

The objective of this project is to develop a highly portable, reliable, readable and maintainable Modula-2 to C translator and via-C compiler that generates authentic and readable C source code.

Language

M2C supports the bootstrap kernel (BSK) subset of Modula-2 R10 (M2R10).

An online version of the language specification is here:

https://github.com/m2sf/m2bsk/wiki/Language-Specification

The authoritative language specification (PDF) is available for download:

https://github.com/m2sf/PDFs/blob/master/M2BSK%20Language%20Description.pdf

M2C does not support the earlier PIM or ISO dialects.

For a PIM Modula-2 translator see the MOTTO project.

For an ISO Modula-2 compiler that generates C sources, see XDS-C.

Grammar

The grammar of M2C's command line interface is in the project repository

https://github.com/m2sf/m2c/blob/main/grammar/cli-grammar.gll

The grammar of Modula-2 R10 is in the project repository

https://github.com/m2sf/m2c/blob/main/grammar/m2c-grammar.gll

For a graphical representation of the grammar, see section Syntax Diagrams.

Targets

M2C will generate C99 sources compileable with any C compiler that supports the C99 standard.

License

M2C is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) both v.2.1 and v.3.

Prerequisites

Compiling M2C requires a C compiler that supports the C99 standard of C.

There are no dependencies on any third party libraries.

OS support

M2C will compile and run on any target system supported by the host-compiler.

However, the file system access and pathname parsing libraries are platform dependent. Implementations for AmigaOS, DOS/Windows, POSIX/Unix and VMS are provided.

Adaptation of these libraries may be needed for other platforms.

Development Languages

• M2C itself is written in a subset of C99.
• The syntax diagram generator script is written in TCL/TK (not required to build M2C)
• Build configuration scripts are written in the prevalent shell language of the hosting platform

Contact

If you have questions or would like to contribute to the project, get in touch via

• Modula2 Telegram group chat

• email to the project maintainer

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