The \-RTL Translator Source Distribution

The translator is written in a combination of Icon and Standard ML. (Actually, the translator does not run any Icon code, but Icon is used to generate some of the ML code that makes up the translator.) To make things even more interesting, the source code is written in noweb. Finally, the translator uses special Standard ML of New Jersey features, especially the Compilation Manager.

A final note --- this distribution includes (and subsumes) the experimental ML version of the New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit.

Preliminaries

1. Get and install Icon from the Icon Project (FAQ here) at the University of Arizona. You can get binaries for 386 DOS, Linux, SPARC SunOS, SPARC Solaris, 32-bit Windows, and other targets.
2. Get and install the noweb literate-programming tool.
3. Get and install Standard ML of New Jersey, version 110 or later.

The final preliminary is to download the \-RTL source package.

Building the tools and the \-RTL translator

1. Compile and install the tools needed to build the translator.
2. Build sml-nw, a version of Standard ML of New Jersey that understands how to use these tools build the translator. If an error occurs during this step, see below.
3. Compile the translator itself (the big step).

Potential errors building sml-nw

	val runlex =
	    Tools.stdShellProcessor 
               ( { command = command, tool = "ML-Lex+" }  (* old style *)
               ; { mkCommand = fn () => command, tool = "ML-Lex+" }  (* new style *)
               )

Using the translator

• lrtl -help produces a usage message, as well as telling what modules have been precompiled into the translator.
• lrtl -tex file runs the translator and emits part of a processor supplement into file.tex. Turning this file into a full processor supplement is nontrivial, but it is probably the easiest way to begin to see if what you specified was what you intended.
• lrtl -cln file runs the translator and emits fully decorated typed lambda-calculus into file.cln. This calculus is a bit difficult to read (because it does not use infix notation), but it shows the explicit specialization of all the RTL operators to the appropriate sizes, which is useful for debugging.
• If I ever get the ASDL installation problems fixed, lrtl -pkl file will run the translator and emit an ASDL pickle into file.pkl. Such pickle contain the attributes in the \-RTL specification, and they can easily be read by C programs, etc.

The \-RTL translator uses an experimental type-inference algorithm that can usually insert fetches automatically and decide how large a fetched value will be. The easiest way to control this feature is with explicit typecasts, e.g., $m[addr] : #16 bits. It may sometimes be more convenient to define a function to perform the cast; i.e., if function hword is \x.x:#16 bits, then hword $m[addr] is equivalent to $m[addr] : #16 bits.

Correspondence