Self‐compiling compilers: An appraisal of their implementation and portability

Abstract

SUlMlMARYSelf-compiling compilers are compilers written in the programming language they are made to compile. They constitute a very interesting case of portable programs, and are rapidly gaining in popularity. This paper is an attempt to classify and evaluate the different methods which have been used for writing and transporting such compilers, according to numerous and various criteria. The potential implementor is then given an idea of the important factors to be considered when selecting one of the many implementation methods available. The study is centred around a specific case, the programming language Pascal and its many compilers.

Porting the Zed compiler

“…The time for one person to perform such a port has varied from one month to six. (This compares very favourably with the time required for porting other portable compilers, and even compares favourably with the time required to write an interpreter for Pascal-P [2,4,11,13,15]). Very little of this time is spent coding the machine specific functions.…”

“…The design of the Zed compiler differs from that of other portable compilers [1,8,13,16] in three major ways, and these issues will be examined before describing the compiler in detail. The first difference is that we chose to generate relocatable object code rather than assembly code.…”

Self-generating program specializers

“…The idea of partially validating compilers by selfcompilation has been used since the late 1950's, cf. the summary [19]. It is hoped that a study of the sensitivity and practicality of a specializer self-generation test will appear in the future.…”

Genesys: service-oriented construction of property conform code generators

“…The T-diagram [33] in Fig. 5 summarizes the initial phases of the Genesys project, that involved both bootstrapping and evolution.…”