Re: Reducing VM size

On Sunday, 10 June, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
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> When compiling down, what keeps you from using a DSL to C-Source compiler?
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Technically nothing, however the idea would be to avoid having to compile any code ahead of time, and interoperability with the host language at runtime.
> Although I certainly understand that this introduces a huge DSL ^^
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It would.  
> Also would this be done by an existing C compiler or the custom JIT?
Probably I'd look at using some of the clang libraries, and integrate it as part of the JIT using the libs that already exist.  
> When using the JIT wouldn't it be easier to use a simplified subset a la loki?
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Maybe, depends on how hard it'd be to get the clang libs to integrate in a meaningful way.  
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> Cheers Jan
> On Jun 10, 2012, at 4:28 PM, Jeremy Tregunna wrote:
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> > So, I had a wild thought yesterday:
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> > Exposing the host language in the source language, without having the source language act as a compiler to translate its code into the host language. I.e., for instance, Io interpreter written in C, exposes C to the runtime, but doesn't require a step of converting the Io code into raw C code, and compiling that down to a binary, linking against the runtime.
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> > I thought it might be possible to embed a C interpreter with access to the calling programs memory space (lets forget about OS technical challenges involved with that last requirement for a moment).
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> > This would allow us to cut things out of the core, implement the rest of the system at runtime in C (presumably tied into the JIT to compile it all down), really reduce the core out to almost nothing.
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> > My justification for an approach like this is to keep the size of the Acute VM down to really nothing. Just the core object model, and then at a higher level, figure out other ways to reduce the complexity of the VM.
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> > Thoughts?  
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> > Regards,
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> > Jeremy Tregunna
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