jCF - j/Compiler Framework

Compiler project for the University of Waterloo CS444/644 compiler construction course. The Joos1W language is based off the Java 1.3 language. See here for a complete feature table of Joos:

• https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs444/joos/features/
• Java Language Specification (2nd Edition)

Our project is written in C++ with Flex and Bison as our lexer and parser generators. To build the project, simply run:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. && make

Make sure you are either using Clang 16 (preferred) or later or GCC 12 or later. There is currently a bug in older GCC compilers that would not compile this project. In addition, here is a summary of the dependencies:

1. CMake >= 3.21
2. Clang >= 17 for C++23 support
3. libstdc++-12-dev or later (must have C++23 support)
4. flex >= 2.6.4 and bison >= 3.8.2

In addition, if you wish to build the debug version, you will need:

1. xsltproc (for debug builds)
2. One of libdw-dev, binutils-dev or libdwarf-dev (for backward.cpp)

Our project directory structure is:

• lib/: Contains the core compiler libraries. Includes AST, parser grammar and other files.
• tests/: Contains the unit test drivers and data files.
• tools/: Contains the frontends -- these are the programs you actually can run.

Getting Started (macOS)

1. Install the dependencies via Homebrew:

   brew install cmake bison flex llvm@17
   

   bison, flex, and llvm@17 are all keg-only, so Homebrew will not symlink them into your PATH. That is fine — we point CMake at them explicitly below.

2. Configure the build, pointing CMake at the Homebrew Clang, Bison, and Flex:

   mkdir build
   cmake -S . -B build \
     -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm@17/bin/clang \
     -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm@17/bin/clang++ \
     -DBISON_EXECUTABLE=/opt/homebrew/opt/bison/bin/bison \
     -DFLEX_EXECUTABLE=/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/bin/flex
   

3. Build:

   make -C build all -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
   

   The tool binaries (jcc1, scanner, parser, ...) are written to build/.

Note: Use llvm@17 rather than the latest llvm. Newer libc++ fully removes some C++17-deprecated facilities (e.g. std::result_of) that this codebase still relies on.

Running examples on the TIR VM

You can try out the VM once built by executing:

./build/tir-vm tests/vm/HelloJDK.java

and you should see something like:

Hello, World!
tir-vm: '_JF8HelloJDK4testEi' returned 0

You should also check out the optimizing compiler frontend jcc1 alone:

jcc1 --help