copilot VS mrustc

[2] https://github.com/Copilot-Language/copilot/releases/tag/v3.16

The student, if selected, will be working on extending our capabilities to test cFS/ROS/FPrime applications, especially those using Ogma and/or Copilot for monitoring. Both Ogma and Copilot are open-source software written in Haskell.

For low-level embedded, you have Copilot!

Current emphasis is on improving the codebase in terms of stability and test coverage, removing unnecessary dependencies, hiding internal definitions, and formatting the code to meet our new coding standards. Users are encouraged to participate by opening issues and asking questions via our github repo (https://github.com/copilot-language/copilot).

In case you are wondering which copilot came first (I certainly was) - this repository starts in 2010 with a source code upload: https://github.com/Copilot-Language/copilot/commits/b2fc3456...

not maintainer but I think the correct one is this: https://github.com/Copilot-Language/copilot/tree/master/copi...

Mrustc supports Rust 1.54.0 today

There are three. The official one, mrustc (no borrow checker, but can essentially compile the official rustc) and GCC (can't really compile anything substantial yet). Only rustc is production-ready though.

Otherwise you could try compiling to C using mrustc and going from there, but as mrustc is really only intended for compiler bootstrapping it won't be a fun experience. Mrustc mostly just assumes that the code you're compiling is valid, so you lose all the advantages of choosing Rust over C in the first place. It also targets x86-64 so the C it emits might need some work before it'll compile.

In fact, https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc compiles code without the need for a borrow checker :-)

Instead of an independent re-implementation, a small niche implementation whose only purpose is to bootstrap, like mrustc. Since its a much smaller scope, and only intended to work on known correct code, its much simpler and easier to do. It doesnt need to do any type or borrow checking or much of anything, because the rust source is already known to be correct/checked by itself.

There is also mrustc

Lifetime sigils couldn't change the structure of your program, they don't actually affect anything it it, in fact you can remove them from correct program, compile it with mrustc (which ignores lifetime marks) and it would still work.

Ideally, what Guix would want is similar to what https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc/ does for Rust (a compiler, not written in Rust, for Rust).

So for Dylan, we'd like to have a compiler for Open Dylan, not written in Dylan. (it can also require multiple steps to get up to Open Dylan--that would be fine)

It's not in the interest of our users to use binary blob compilers for bootstrapping.

We would also unbundle LLVM, clang and the bdw gc and use the ones from Guix.