Optimizing Oberon-2 Compiler

Note: The information on this page is very out of date. I have not found the time to update it in a meaningful way. For information on the oo2c-2.x releases, please refer to the mailing list archives and the change logs of the file releases on the SourceForge project page. --mva

Contents	Download
Introduction	`SourceForge` [Home] [Releases] [CVS]
	`oo2c_32-1.5.9` [bz2]
OO2C: The Oberon-2 to ANSI-C Translator	`OOCref-000229` [gz] [html]
The OOC Reference Manual	`Mailing List Archive` [SourceForge]
Miscellaneous
Servers and Links

Introduction

In short, OOC is an Internet based project providing an Oberon-2 development platform. It consists of

an optimizing compiler,
a number of source code and compiler related tools,
a set of standard library modules, and
a reference manual.

The programming language Oberon-2 is defined in the March 1995 report, available from the ftp server of the ETH Zürich. The compiler is built around an innovative intermediate code representation called GSA (see [Bra95]). GSA stands for `guarded single-assignment form'. It combines `static single-assignment form' (SSA) with a new way of encoding control flow. The major characteristic of SSA is that its instructions operate on values that are passed from a generating instruction to instructions that use it as an argument. SSA does not know variables or assignments to variables, nor does it impose a strict ordering of instructions.

The flexible nature of the GSA code representation allows for efficient code improving transformations on the intermediate code. Due to its special properties, it is quite easy to implement optimizations like constant propagation, copy propagation, procedure inlining, or common subexpression elimination, just to name a few. The compiler front-end translates directly to GSA. It is retargetable, that is, it can be adjusted to suit different target platforms. A prototype back-end exists, using ANSI-C as the target language. This back-end is used by OO2C, the generic OOC compiler for the Unix platform.

OO2C: The Oberon-2 to ANSI-C Translator

OO2C is the generic OOC compiler for the Unix platform. It is an Oberon-2 to ANSI-C translator and runs on any 32 bit Unix system with an ANSI-C compiler (including Linux, HP-UX, SunOS, and Solaris). Installation is based on GNU autoconf, which guarantees smooth and convenient installation across all supported systems. An experimental compiler for 64 bit systems exists. Get the one of the oo2c_32 tar files for 32 bit systems, and oo2c_64 for 64 bit systems like the DEC Alpha.

OO2C can use two add-on packages to expand its own capabilities: Hans-J. Boehm's conservative garbage collector gc and GNU libtool. The garbage collector extends OO2C's run-time system with the ability to free unused heap objects. With the help of libtool, OO2C can create shared and static libraries from a set of modules. Please refer to the chapter "Installing OO2C" in Part II of the OOC Reference Manual for information on how to use these packages.

The OO2C distribution is available here.

The OOC Reference Manual

The OOC Reference Manual provides complete supporting documentation for the OOC library and OOC compilers (including OO2C). Part I covers the standard library modules in detail, and gives examples for their use. Part II provides information about the language accepted by OOC compilers, OOC pragmas, and installation and use of OO2C.

For questions, comments, or suggestions regarding the manual you can contact the authors:

Part I (Library)	Eric Nikitin
Part II (Compiler)	Michael van Acken

Please note: Most chapters (about 90%) of the reference manual are finished, but it is still a work in progress.

The HTML version of the manual is here. The OO2C distribution includes the manual's `texinfo' source and the derived `info' files. The sources and additional output formats (including Postscript) are also available separately in the OOCref tar file.

Miscellaneous

The ooc-compiler mailing list has been set up as a discussion place for developers, and for the announcement of new releases. The mailing list resides on SourceForge. You can subscribe via this page.

Past postings to the mailing list are available in the archive, very old postings are here.

If you want to contribute to OOC, or have questions, send mail to mva@users.sf.net.

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