In this experiment I aim to develop from the ground up a working compiler, assembler, linker and library, for a C-like language. I start with a minimal program capable of generating itself from its source and gradually develop higher level tools and abstractions, as follows.

This programs produced in this project are 32-bit ELF executables which run on a Linux kernel running on an Intel x86 processor. They run fine on modern 64-bit systems.

The starting point of the experiment is a tiny program for packing hexadecimal octets into binary.

This stage adds a tool to wrap a text section into a minimal ELF executable, as well as further developing the unhex program to support labels, references to earlier labels, and a freer input format that allows comments.

Here we introduce a light-weight assembler, written in machine code using no forward jumps. It generates a text section that can be wrapped with the stage 1 elfify program to produce an executable.

The assembler is rewritten in assembler language and is joined by a linker, which together allow for separate compilation units.

The project's first compiler is added at this stage. Its input language is a typeless subset of C similar to B, and it emits assembler language. We also build a startup file (crt0.o) and the start of a simple C library.

The compiler is rewritten in its source language, and a type system added. We use it to implement a fairly standards-compliant C preprocessor, and a compiler driver (cc) that spawns the cpp, ccx (the compiler proper), as and ld. Finally, cmp is a POSIX compliant utility to compare two files, which is used in a preproccesor test suite.

The code in this project is copyright (C) Richard Smith, 2009–2021, and is licensed for use under version 3 or later of the GNU General Public License, a copy of which can be found in the file LICENCE.txt. The documentation in these README files is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence, version 4.