Cider Compiler

Cider is a systems programming language focused on marrying the ergonomics of modern languages with the advantages of less-abstracted, low-level languages.

Supported Targets

Target	OS	Object format	ISA	ABI
linux-riscv32g	Linux	ELF32	RV32G	ILP32D

Tests

Running tests

Requirements:

• Linux (probably)
• Python >= 3.14
• Qemu (specifically qemu-user-static, for binaries like qemu-riscv32-static, etc.)

To run:

Run testing/run_tests.py, providing the path to the compiler binary to test.

usage: run_tests.py [-h] [-n N] compiler_path

Test runner

positional arguments:
  compiler_path    Path of compiler binary to test

options:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -n, --workers N  Number of concurrent workers to use

Defining tests

Tests are defined in the tests/ subdirectory. Each test consists of a .cdr source file with comments at the very top defining what the expected output should be. These comments should be of the form: //! KEY=VALUE (note the exclamation mark). Keys are case insensitive. Below are the recognized keys:

Key	Type	Default	Description
BUILD_EXIT_CODE	int	0	Expected return value of compilation of program
EXIT_CODE	int	0	Expected return value of the program
STDOUT	string	""	Expected output to stdout
STDERR	string	""	Expected output to stderr

TODOs

For Jaxson's eyes only

Next:

• Finish machine code generation of smaller int types.

Soon:

• Check code for stuff that doesn't need to be in headers
• Testing improvements:
  • Timeout
  • finish stdout/stderr checking
• turn off colored output (automatically if not tty perhaps?)
• Improve int literals
  • negative ints (broken rn perhaps?)

Fixes:

• Convert int literal AST to by 64 bits

Before self-hosting:

• locals vars
• if statements
• loops
• functions
  • function definitions/declaration
  • arguments
• floats
• global vars
  • global init dependency checking
• structs
• traits
• stdlib
• executable or library

maybe eventually:

• 64 bit
• try doing UTF8
• labelled code blocks (for early breaks)
• soft floats
• soft multiplication

future optimizations:

• Better register allocator (use callee saved first on busy functions?)
• Optimize out LUI?

notes for documentation

• all top level functions are hoisted (global var initialization is calculated with DAG)
• binary operators are left associative (except for equality/comparison, needs parens)
• type names must start with letters, numbers signifiy number literal

tests to remember to write

• overflowing int literal
• overflowing integers with operations
• arithmetic bitshift right
• left/right associativity