Interpreter, Compiler, JIT

This repository contains the programs used in Nick Desaulniers' blog post; an interpreter, a compiler, and a Just In Time (JIT) compiler for the brainfuck language. It is meant to show how similar these techniques are, and then improved by several students who learnt system programming to bring X86/ARM backend along with DynASM support.

Portability

While all three are written in C, only the interpreter should be portable, even to Emscripten. The compiler and JIT is highly dependant on the specific Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), and Linux style calling convention.

Prerequisites

Development packages for Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8-multilib
sudo apt-get install lua5.2 lua-bitop
sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf
sudo apt-get install qemu-user

Building

make

Running

The Interpreter

./interpreter progs/hello.bf

The Compiler

make run-compiler

The JIT

make run-jit-x64
make run-jit-arm
make bench-jit-x64

License

Except the code in progs/ and dynasm/, the JIT-Construct source files are distributed BSD-style license found in the LICENSE file.

External sources:

• DynASM is a tiny preprocessor and runtime for generating machine code at runtime and copyrighted by Mike Pall, released under the MIT license.
• progs/mandelbrot.b is a mandelbrot set fractal viewer in brainfuck written by Erik Bosman.
• progs/sierpinski.b is written by NYYRIKKI.
• progs/awib.b is written by Mats Linander.
• progs/hanoi.b is written by Clifford Wolf.
• progs/oobrain.b is written by Chris Rathman