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18 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
18 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
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## High-level architecture
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The `asterius` project is hosted at [GitHub](https://github.com/tweag/asterius). The monorepo contains several packages:
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* [`asterius`](https://github.com/tweag/asterius/tree/master/asterius). This is the central package of the `asterius` compiler.
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* [`binaryen`](https://github.com/tweag/asterius/tree/master/binaryen). It contains the latest source code of the C++ library [`binaryen`](https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen) in tree, and provides complete raw bindings to its [C API](https://github.com/tweag/asterius/blob/master/binaryen/binaryen/src/binaryen-c.h).
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* [`ghc-toolkit`](https://github.com/tweag/asterius/tree/master/ghc-toolkit). It provides a framework for implementing Haskell-to-X compilers by retrieving `ghc`'s various types of in-memory intermediate representations. It also contains the latest source code of `ghc-prim`/`integer-gmp`/`integer-simple`/`base` in tree.
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The `asterius` package provides an `ahc` executable which is a drop-in replacement of `ghc` to be used with `Setup configure`. `ahc` redirects all arguments to the real `ghc` most of the time, but when it's invoked with the `--make` major mode, it invokes `ghc` with its frontend plugin. This is inspired by Edward Yang's [How to integrate GHC API programs with Cabal](http://blog.ezyang.com/2017/02/how-to-integrate-ghc-api-programs-with-cabal/).
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Based on `ghc-toolkit`, `asterius` implements a [`ghc` frontend plugin](https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/extending_ghc.html#frontend-plugins) which translates [Cmm](https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Compiler/CmmType) to `binaryen` IR. The serialized `binaryen` IR can then be loaded and linked to a WebAssembly binary (not implemented yet). The normal compilation pipeline which generates native machine code is not affected.
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## About "booting"
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In order for `asterius` to support non-trivial Haskell programs (that is, at least most things in `Prelude`), it needs to run the compilation process for `base` and its dependent packages. This process is known as "booting".
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The `asterius` package provides an `ahc-boot` test suite which tests booting by compiling the wired-in packages provided by `ghc-toolkit` and using `ahc` to replace `ghc` when configuring. This is inspired by Joachim Breitner's [`veggies`](https://github.com/nomeata/veggies).
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