Towards Modular Compilation Using Higher-Order Effects

Towards Modular Compilation Using Higher-Order Effects

Reinders, J.S. (TU Delft Programming Languages)

Lammel, Ralf (editor)
Mosses, Peter D. (editor)
Steimann, Friedrich (editor)

2023

Compilers transform a human readable source language into machine readable target language. Nanopass compilers simplify this approach by breaking up this transformation into small steps that are more understandable, maintainable, and extensible. We propose a semantics-driven variant of the nanopass compiler architecture exploring the use a effects and handlers to model the intermediate languages and the transformation passes, respectively. Our approach is fully typed and ensures that all cases in the compiler are covered. Additionally, by using an effect system we abstract over the control flow of the intermediate language making the compiler even more flexible. We apply this approach to a minimal compiler from a language with arithmetic and let-bound variables to a string of pretty printed X86 instructions. In the future, we hope to extend this work to compile a larger and more complicated language and we envision a formal verification framework from compilers written in this style.

algebraic effects and handlers
compilation
higher-order effects
modularity
monadic semantics
nanopass

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a20ccc22-633e-4693-b482-ae7bd448ed80

https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.EVCS.2023.22

Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing

9783959772679

Eelco Visser Commemorative Symposium, EVCS 2023

2023 Eelco Visser Commemorative Symposium, EVCS 2023, 2023-04-05, Delft, Netherlands

OpenAccess Series in Informatics, 2190-6807, 109

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2023 J.S. Reinders