69 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
69 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Compiling a Functional Language Using C++, Part 4 - Small Improvements
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date: 2019-08-06T14:26:38-07:00
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draft: true
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tags: ["C and C++", "Functional Languages", "Compilers"]
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---
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We've done quite a big push in the previous post. We defined
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type rules for our language, implemented unification,
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and then implemented unification to enforce these rules for
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our program. The post was pretty long, and even then we
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weren't able to fit quite everything into it.
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For instance, we threw 0 whenever an error occured. This
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gives us no indication of what actually went wrong. We should
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probably define an exception class, one that can contain
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information about the error, and report it to the user.
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Also, when there's no error, our compiler doesn't
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really tell us anything at all about the code besides
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the number of definitions. We probably want to see the types
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of these definitions, or at least some intermediate information.
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At the very least, we want to have the __ability__ to see
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this information.
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Finally, we have no build system. We are creating more
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and more source files, and so far (unless you've taken
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initiative), we've been compiling them by hand. We want
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to only compile source files that have changed,
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and we want to have a standard definition of how to
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build our program.
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### Setting up CMake
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This would be extremely easy if not for Flex and Bison. We start with the usual:
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 1 2 >}}
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Next, we want to set up Flex and Bison. CMake provides two commands for this:
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 4 5 >}}
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We now have access to commands that allow us to tell CMake about our parser
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and tokenizer (or scanner). We use them as follows:
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 6 12 >}}
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We also want CMake to know that the scanner needs to parser's header file
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in order to compile. We add this dependency:
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 13 13 >}}
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Finally, we add our source code to a CMake target. We use
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the `BISON_parser_OUTPUTS` and `FLEX_scanner_OUTPUTS` to
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pass in the source files generated by Flex and Bison.
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 15 22 >}}
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Almost there! `parser.cpp` will be generated in the `build` directory
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during an out-of-source build, and so will `parser.hpp`. When building,
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`parser.cpp` will try to look for `ast.hpp`, and `main.cpp` will look for
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`parser.hpp`. We want them to be able to find each other, so we
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add both the source directory and the build (binary) directory to
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the list of includes directories:
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{{< codelines "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" 23 24 >}}
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That's it for CMake! Let's try our build:
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```
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cmake -S . -B build
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cd build && make -j8
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```
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We get an executable called `compiler`. Excellent! Here's the whole file:
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{{< codeblock "CMake" "compiler/04/CMakeLists.txt" >}}
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