rustc_codegen_cranelift VS rust-mini-games

Windows is supported. See https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_cranelift/issues/....

> When this happens, it seems like it'll be possible to get the LLVM bits out of the bootstrap process and lead to a fully self-hosted Rust.

What do you mean by "when this happens"? GP's point is that this has already happened: the Cranelift backend is feature-complete from the perspective of the language [0], except for inline assembly and unwinding on panic. It was merged into the upstream compiler in 2020 [1], and a compiler built with only the Cranelift backend is perfectly capable of building another compiler. LLVM hasn't been a necessary component of the Rust compiler for quite some time.

[0] https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift

[1] https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/77975

Note that the Cranelift codegen will eventually become standard for debug builds to speed them up.

Maybe one day we'll have rustc b3 backend like what they did with Cranelift

Additionally, there is gcc codegen for rustc (https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc_codegen_gcc), which is not a compiler per se, but an alternative code generator, with more architectures supported and other nice things. It's also coming along, but there's still a lot of work to do there too. There's also Cranelift codegen (https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift), which is designed to make debug builds faster, but this is not as exciting/useful as the other 2.

For the instant reloading, that's in Sycamore, so you should speak to its devs, but as for the alternative compiler backend, it's not my project, but it uses Cranelift and works pretty well! See https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift for details.

The more immediate goal of "distribute the cranelift backend as a rustup component" has been making good progress and seems like it might happen relatively soon https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift/milestone/...

I personally like to make small video games, and I use the game as an excuse to learn some other technology by incorporating it. I've been doing this to learn Rust [0].

If you want to do something similar, I have a huge list of video game ideas you can pull from [1].

[0] https://github.com/Syn-Nine/rust-mini-games/tree/main/2d-gam...

[1] https://github.com/Syn-Nine/four-emoji-concepts

Related: If anyone is interested, I've been working on an ECS based mini-game framework in Rust [0] that runs with this idea. It has a 1200 hz simulation clock, 60 hz rendering clock, and 150 hz physics integrator (Euler). I've also posted some example mini-games that use it [1].

[0] https://github.com/Syn-Nine/mgfw

[1] https://github.com/Syn-Nine/rust-mini-games/tree/main/2d-gam...

Tangentially related - if anyone is new to Rust and wants to see some simple mini text game examples, I've been working on a bunch [0]. It also includes some more complicated text games:

Asylum - Choose your own adventure style interactive narrative

Knights and Barbarians - Simple turned based strategy game

Legend of the Rusty Dragon - Simple adventure game inspired by Legend of the Red Dragon

[0] https://github.com/Syn-Nine/rust-mini-games