tooling

Tooling

The mvx-basic compiler driver

mvx-basic prog.b -o prog                 # compile and link an executable
mvx-basic -c prog.b -o prog.o            # compile only
mvx-basic -shared sub.b -o libsub        # subroutine shared library
mvx-basic main.b sub1.b sub2.b -o prog   # multi-source build
mvx-basic -O0|-O1|-O2 ...                # optimisation (default -O2)
mvx-basic -g0 prog.b -o prog             # no debug information
mvx-basic -s prog.b -o prog              # no symbols in the linked output
mvx-basic --emit-llvm ...                # also write textual IR
mvx-basic -D NAME[=value] ...      define a preprocessor symbol

Errors: item:line: message on stderr. DWARF debug info is emitted by default — lldb prog, b prog.b:12, run steps BASIC source, even optimised.

Shipping a program. -g0 compiles without debug information and -s links without symbols; together they are the production build, and neither changes what the program does. -s keeps the dynamic symbols, so a stripped program still resolves CALL into a stripped subroutine library. The same two are available from the BASIC and CATALOG verbs as the keywords NODEBUG and STRIP:

> CATALOG BP INVOICE.RPT NODEBUG STRIP
[244] INVOICE.RPT cataloged

Testing

ninja -C build check               # or scripts/test.sh  (-q skips the sieve)
scripts/test.sh --bless            # re-capture expected outputs

Language tests diff compiled programs against tests/expected/; system tests run scripted TCL sessions in a throwaway account (queries, ED, packages, the gate, indexes, the daemon with its lock lease); the sieve benchmark asserts correctness.

VSCode

editors/vscode/mvx-basic — symlink it into ~/.vscode/extensions: syntax highlighting (docblock @tags included), comment toggling, auto-indent, snippets, and the $mvx problem matcher. The repo's .vscode/tasks.json binds Cmd+Shift+B to compile the current file with clickable errors. Files ending .b, or inside BP/, *.BP/, or *_BP/ directories, open as MVX BASIC.

These docs

This documentation is the project's GitHub wiki: one Markdown page per chapter, with _Sidebar.md driving the navigation. Edit pages on GitHub, or clone the wiki and push:

git clone https://github.com/mvx-lang/mvx.wiki.git

The main repo checks the wiki out under docs/ as a submodule (git submodule update --init), and a release tarball bundles a snapshot under share/doc/mvx. The same Markdown can feed pandoc for a typeset PDF, or mdBook for a static HTML site, when one is wanted.