Here was my original idea for the AOT compiler. I started work on this before Chriss came in and showed off his work. And then as time flew by (and I was assigned to three research projects this semester), I completely ran out of time and energy to keep this project running.
Anyway, my idea was very simple, but inefficient: If you look at the IL code, it's completely stack based. You push on values, pop values off, different operations do different things to the stack, etc... why not translate the IL into simple x86 stack operations? For example, when you: int i = 5; in C#, the IL pushes that value onto the "IL stack". Why not simply translate that into an x86 push operation? In fact, almost all IL commands can easily be translated to simple x86 operations. The only real issue is with the decimal type (80-bit ?), which doesn't translate well to x86. The only thing we would have to standardize on is the memory layout of an assembly. Is there a header which includes the entry points? Is there a table which includes locations of all the classes and methods? etc... We'd use a standard set of registers for each operation. Meaning, when we want to do the IL add operation, we pop the last two values from the stack off into a documented set of registers, add them, and then push them back. As time went on, we could combine common sets of operations for more efficiency. Like I said, I ran out of time and Chriss's solutions seemed to work better at the time. Another issue was my frustration with developing in MonoDevelop. Now I'm running Visual Studio through a VM on my MacBook Pro (btw: svn supports conversion from CRLF's to LF's automatically, so we can easily incorporate Windows and *nix developers). Chriss's AOT compiler does a lot more than my simple compiler would (mostly dealing with optimizations). If I had more time I'd love to test out my idea though. Johann On Aug 29, 2007, at 2:27 AM, Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu wrote: >> I don't think anyone here is questioning your contributions. I for >> one >> think you've done a great job with developing something like the AOT. > > After some pretty hefty review I have some pretty hefty thoughts on > AOT. But > Id like to talk to Chris 1:1 and get some more backgrounders before > spewing > my thoughts about. > > But I'll say this. AOT is core to this project. It needs to be > modularized, > opened up and heavily worked on. I also believe significant > portions need > thought about and likely redone. But if we modularize it a bit more > and some > of us help, the load wont all be on Chris and we can do it. > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > --- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. > Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. > Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a > browser. > Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ > _______________________________________________ > SharpOS-Developers mailing list > SharpOS-Developers@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sharpos-developers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ SharpOS-Developers mailing list SharpOS-Developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sharpos-developers
