vox VS dmd

I chase the same goal with Vox, although it is written in D.

Just somewhere to point me, because while I do understand SSA a bit though I can't seem to make progress learning about it (dont know where from). I found https://github.com/MrSmith33/vox/blob/master/internals.md which kinda feeds me information but probably not enough.

Looking for contributors to Vox programming language/compiler: Statically typed, compiled and embeddable language, primarily focused on gamedev. It uses custom backend to keep low compile-times and small size. Written in D language.

https://github.com/MrSmith33/vox

Because it is easier to have a free-list in a dedicated array arena, so you could reuse memory when you free it (and you need to grow arrays when you fill them). I was lazy and did 13 array arenas each dedicated to allocating fixed size chunks, from 16 bytes to 64k bytes. Bigger sizes currently go to malloc/free. And I restrict arrays to PoT sizes, so they only request PoT sized chunks from array arenas.

I use this approach in Vox compiler. Everything is stored in arenas including AST nodes and IR. I'm in the process of documenting the design, but I added a bit of description on memory management and IR storage

Tip: Should probably use the Github permalink https://github.com/MrSmith33/vox/blob/35ec440d0c9a475cd4add6093d122cd249b03be9/source/be/reg_alloc/linear_scan.d#L891-L918 so later readers do not go to some random line after you change that file :)

Here is a CI build

Here's the pipeline spitting out the same error as on my macbook did.

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/actions/runs/8023469412/job/219...

Not completely on topic (if you read TFA) but my favorite Git commit is by compiler badass and HN frequenter, where he checks in an entire C compiler to the D language repo:

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27102584

A new generated code alone is 4000 lines long [1]. The actual code added is just 2000 lines, and some are used to pay debts, I mean, to make a proper code generator (which can be alternatively written in a simpler scripting langauge). In any case it is never comparable to the entier C parser proper.

[1] https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/15307/files#diff-3677bcc89...

D is completely opensource already (https://github.com/dlang/dmd). The "open" of OpenD is just ADR saying that OpenD will be more open to new language features than D has historically been.

The reference compiler, DMD, is open source: https://github.com/dlang/dmd

But they don't accept just any Pull Request or features the community submits, understandably. There's a process called DIP for language improvements: https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/README.md

However, by some accounts, it's really hard to get anything through.

Given D already has so many feature, I find that to be a good thing , to be honest, by not everyone agrees, of course.