| I had a very different experience. I implemented Common Lisp using LLVM-IR as the backend (https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp.git). 1. I started with a primitive lisp interpreter written in C++ and worked hard on exposing C++ functions/classes to my lisp using C++ template programming. LLVM is a C++ library, the C bindings are always behind the C++ API. So exposing the C++ API directly gave me access to the latest, and greatest API. That means you need to keep up with LLVM - but clang helps a lot because API changes appear as clang C++ compile time errors. I've been "chasing the LLVM dragon" (cough - keeping up with the LLVM API) from version 3.something to the upcoming 13. 2. I wrote a Common Lisp compiler in my primitive lisp that converted Common Lisp straight into LLVM-IR. I didn't want to develop my own language - who's got time for that? So I just picked a powerful one (Common Lisp) with macros, classes, generic functions, existing libraries, a community etc. 3. I used alloca/stack allocated variables everywhere and let mem2reg optimize what it could to registers. I exposed and used the llvm::IRBuilder class that makes generating IR a lot easier. 4. Then I picked an experimental, developing compiler "Cleavir" written by Robert Strandh and bootstrap that with my Common Lisp compiler. It's like that movie "Inception" - but it makes sense :-). Now we have a Common Lisp programming environment that interoperates with C++ at a very deep level. Common Lisp stack frames intermingle perfectly with C++ stack frames and we can use all the C/C development, debugging and profiling tools. This Common Lisp programming environment supports "Cando" a computational chemistry programming environment for developing advanced therapeutics and diagnostic molecules. We are looking for people who want to work with us - if interested and you have a somewhat suitable background - drop me a message at info@thirdlaw.tech |
I was wondering if this was some new twist on clasp that I was unaware of - but then discovered that I know that project as SICL (not cleavir).
Since you had a primitive cl compiler (from 2) - 4 added a runtime/advanced cl compiler?
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL