At 12:22 PM -0500 2/23/02, Melvin Smith wrote:
>At 11:53 AM 2/23/2002 +0000, Simon Cozens wrote:
>>I was very lucky recently to attend a talk by Ganesh Sittampalam
>>introducing Microsoft .NET and the Common Language Runtime. A lot of
>>what CLR is trying to do is quite similar to what we're doing with
>>Parrot, so I thought it would be a good idea to briefly recap what's
>>going on with CLR.
>
>I've read several specs on CLR and ILAsm; there are some good ideas.
>
><rant>
>I wouldn't want Parrot to look like ILA but I wish we would at least
>have more dialogue on things like pbc format, adding directives to
>the language, etc.
Then lets start. I've not been giving the assembler much attention
mainly because I've been assuming that it'll be marginalized quickly,
but I think that assumption's a bad one.
We also need a PDD for the bytecode file format.
>We need notation for globals, notation for metadata about objects and
>types, etc. etc. but frankly the last time I looked at the assembler I sort
>of got lost.
You're not alone here. The assembler gives me headaches, and I think
it's stymied Simon recently as well.
>As well, there is no searchable archive so I'm not even sure what
>dialogue went on about what Parrot 1.0 is even supposed to look
>like.
Nothing specific, just "Should run perl 6". That's not specific
enough. I'll fix.
>As well, I think a "spec" should exist for where we are going with
>the assembly syntax (directives, etc) because there are plenty
>of good examples, just like the ones you cited, for us to draw from.
Yes. PDD 6 is supposed to address this, but what I've been working on
is a bit too slim on the details. Lets fix that.
>To start things off I'd like to propose to very basic directives.
>
>One for setting the entrypoint of the file.
>
>..entry or .start ?
>
>Something for storing metadata about the "compiler" that generated
>the assembler, maybe a .parrot directive?
>
>..parrot [1.0, "Perl6 compiler generated"]
>
>I think these are relatively easy to add; and while we are on the subject,
>is there a proposed "directive" syntax? The dot syntax is easy to parse fwiw.
Dot syntax is it. I think it's mentioned in PDD 6, but not prominently enough.
I also want all the potential jump destinations to be marked
somewhere for the safe mode interpreter, which is another section in
the bytecode file, though that's the subject of another message.
So, anyway, make a list of the proposed directives, and things
necessary to have in the assembly language. We can build on it some,
then go implement it. (With Assembler v3, I expect)
--
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
