AOT for Crack 0.4

One of the trademarks of a scripting language is of course: instant results. You edit your script and execute it immediately, skipping the traditional compile step with its associated build files, etc.

True to scripting language ideals, Crack executes scripts immediately using LLVM's excellent Just In Time (JIT) compiler to handle the heavywork of converting the compiled crack code to native instructions so that it can run both immediately and as fast as possible.


weyrick@mozek:~/crack$ cat hello.crk 
import crack.io cout;
cout `hello JIT\n`;
weyrick@mozek:~/crack$ crack hello.crk 
hello JIT


But what if you find yourself wishing for a native binary, just this once? You know, something like this instead:

weyrick@mozek:~/crack$ crackc hello.crk 

weyrick@mozek:~/crack$ ./hello 

hello JIT

What's a scripter to do? Well with Crack at least, you'll be in luck. Crack 0.4 will include an Ahead Of Time (AOT) mode which will create native binaries just like the example above. All imported crack modules will be included in the binary (something like a static link of the crack modules, although the binary itself is not statically linked). The annotation system (and macros) work for AOT binaries. We also have plans for full DWARF debugging information, which will allow source level debugging with tools like gdb.

Crack 0.4 is tentatively scheduled for release about the same time as LLVM 2.9 (beginning of April).