JAT and JAL on other processors.

[Matthew Schinkel]

Hi Rob, this is a response to your "JAL requests" post, but felt that one was getting a bit long.

For large success of JAL, I do believe it must be upgraded, or a new compiler must be created in order to support other, larger microprocessors. This is not an easy task.

I'm not a fan of the C language, and I'm sure that's why many of us are here. Unfortunately for us, it has one of the things we need the most.. It supports a wide range of processors. So, I believe we need a way of converting our JAL to C and/or to convert C to JAL. A code converter/compiler may allow us to run our code on those processors C supports, and may allow us to use C libraries in our JAL code.

Some long long time ago, Joep had created JAT, which is currently existing as a folder in our repository. I believe it converted JAL code to C but wasn't complete. I don't know much about the code that exists there except that it used ANTLR found at https://www.antlr.org/ to parse JAL code for conversion. There was some criticism about Joep's efforts, partly by myself which I regret because this may have been one of the reasons he dropped the project. I had believed the JAT project should give the exact same results and require little changes to our current, existing code. I don't know enough about the project so I'm not sure that is even possible.

I had also attempted to use ANTLR and had made a very tiny program with it, so I know it can be quite good at parsing and converting code. What I had found was that like Joep, I tried writing my ANTLR code in C, but I think JAVA is it's native language (you can write ANTLR in many languages). If I was going to try again, I'd try with JAVA.

No matter if a new compiler is written, or if the current is upgraded, carefully choose a processor is chosen to start testing on. I'd choose a processor that is popular or easy to get prototype boards for. To name a few (and I don't know much about these), that would be the processors Arduino (wouldn't gain us much?), Rasberry Pi (Too large of a processor?), or those used often in drones STM32 F4 (I'd choose these).

So, if your looking for something to fill your time and help out the community, this surely will!

Matt.

[Rob CJ]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the suggestion. It woul be a huuuuuuuuuuuuge challenge for me to change the JAL compiler. Although Kyle did a god job in separating the parsing, etc. from the code generation so it should be possible to change the back-end part and generate code for other processors (like the Atmel that Arduino is using or code generated for an ST chip). I am not sure about how complex it is to change it from 8-bit to 16-bit or 32-bit but I suspect that may be may have more impact since it is not that isolated. If other code generation would be possible we also have the challenge to generate new device files, hoping that the suppliers of the microcontrollers have something that can be used as source to automatically generate them.

I think the 'easiest' thing is to change the compiler back-end to generate the code for other micro controllers (still 8-bit) but it would stil require a big effort. I will give this some thought though. 

For now I am working on some easier assignments like a library for the TM1637 and one for the DFPlayer. I finished the first one but am waiting for the components to test. It will not take me much time to finish the second one since I found some nice Arduino library that I am now porting to JAL but also here I need to wait for components to test (I still order them in China and so have to accept the long delivery time). The third request was a library for the nRF905 that looks quite similar to the nRF24L01+ that I already created. The strange thing is that it seems simpler than the nRF24L01+ but the component is more expensive (still cheap though) so I wonder how popular it is.

Anyway I will keep your other suggestion in mind and also check what JAT is about. BTW. Was Joep a Dutch guy? Not sure if he chose 'jat' from the Dutch word 'jatten' which means stealing 🙂.

Kind regards,

Rob

---

Van: jal...@googlegroups.com <jal...@googlegroups.com> namens Matthew Schinkel <mattsc...@hotmail.com>
Verzonden: zaterdag 30 mei 2020 06:10
Aan: jallib <jal...@googlegroups.com>
Onderwerp: [jallib] JAT and JAL on other processors.

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jallib" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to jallib+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jallib/555dd1c0-9979-40e3-bdf8-9bc3aead3fb1%40googlegroups.com.