Cwerg aims to be a complete, compact and fast "from-scratch" compiler for a C-like language. It has no dependencies and consists of the following components:
-
Frontend (FE): Overview, Additional Docs, Code
A low-level C-like language with a Python inspired concrete syntax. Still under active development
-
Backend (BE): Overview, Backend IR, Additional Docs, Code
Muti-target (currently: X86-64, Aarch64, Arm32).
Also suitable for other compilers and as a JIT.
Defines an IR that serves as the interface between frontend and backend.
To get started hacking on Cwerg please read getting_started.md.
Most components are implemented twice (see rationale):
- spec/reference implementation: Python 3.10
- high performance implementation: C++20 (with limited STL usage)
Re-implementations in other languages are explicitly encouraged. A lot of code is table driven to facilitate that.
Cwerg de-emphasizes quality of the generated code (the hope is to come within 50% of state of the art compilers) in favor of a small code base that can be understood by a single developer and very fast translation times.
Explicit line number targets are in place to prevent feature creep:
- frontend: 10kLOC (current counts)
- backend 10kLOC (target independent code) + 5kLOC(per target (current counts)
The translation speed target is 1000k LOC per sec using at most 4 cores on a 2020 era midrange desktop or high end laptop.