Next steps

[Bill Cox]

Rune is getting to what I hope will be a fun stage of development.  We're going to rewrite Rune in Rune.  This will allow contributors to write in Rune, rather than having to learn the details of DataDraw-backed C development.

Next goals could include:

• Complete design doc for Rune's High-level IR (HIR) design.  I have a doc in progress, and will share after the initial review.
• Modify the existing bootstrap/database to conform to the updated HIR design.
• Add any additional HIR classes required to parse and print out Rune HIR.
• There is little work here.  For example, we don't need Datatype or even Class yet.  We'll need Tclass, but not Signature.
• Rewrite the dynamic LALR-1 parse I have in C in Rune
• Add support to the bootstrap compiler to be able to compile and then dynamically link and run compile-time modules:
• Needed to parse Rune directly into HIR.  We can bypass AST if we like, as we do in the C Rune compiler.
• Needed later for executing the existing code generators in the builtin directory
• Run the Rune parser and build HIR for most of the initial supported Rune bootstrap HIR needed to represent Rune code.
• Write a Rune code printer from HIR that pretty-prints into legal Rune source code

There are still many steps after that... this may take a year or two as a 20% project.   Before compiling and running helloworld.rn with the bootstrap compiler, we'll still have to write:

• Pass for initial semantic checking
• Pass for local/global variable creation
• Pass for event-driven type inferencing
• Initial C-code generator from HIR

I'm leaning towards writing a C code generator first, rather than the new LLVM IR generator because:

• We can win benchmarks if we run our C output through Clang/Gcc.  Without all the optimizations, such as vectorization and loop unrolling done before writing out LLVM IR, we'll lose all but the most memory intensive benchmarks.
• A C backend will help us port Rune to platforms not fully supported by Clang.
• It allows a C-based Rune compiler to easily stay in sync with the Rune based compiler.  I'll feel better deleting the original C Rune compiler.

Bill

[Aiden Hall]

Hurrah! Stoked for more Rune development :)

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