Should we add an AST in the bootstrap?

[Bill Cox]

Rust macros manipulate the AST, which is very cool, IMO.  The C version of the Rune compiler parsed directly into its database data structures, without an AST.  Also, the bootstrap will have a dynamic LALR(1) parser since yacc doesn't support Rune, and I'd like to better support domain-specific languages.  Being able to directly manipulate the AST in Rune would aid building DSLs.

Bill

[0dminnimda]

Will having an AST make the binding easier? IMHO the first bootstrap should only have features needed to bootstrap itself. The bootstrap version shouldn't be the v1.0 and should not promise any more than "there are enough features to compile me"

[Bill Cox]

If we re-implement my old dynamic LALR-1 parser in Rune (my default plan), we'll have an AST to start, and instead of writing C code in yacc rules (in pares/deparse.y), we'll write Rune code in a separate file to do a pass over the AST to build the database data structures.

The simplest thing might actually be writing a recursive-descent parser in Rune that directly fills out database objects.

On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 10:10 AM 0dminnimda <0dmin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Will having an AST make the binding easier? IMHO the first bootstrap should only have features needed to bootstrap itself. The bootstrap version shouldn't be the v1.0 and should not promise any more than "there are enough features to compile me"

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[Aiden Hall]

I see no reason not to allow manipulation of the AST - as Bill says we'll necessarily have one anyways. However I also agree that this (and really any other new features) should be written only after the bootstrap is largely completed, so we can maintain as close to 1:1 compatibility between compilers as is feasible.

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