I have seen some brief mention of bytecode targets here and there on
this list over the last few years. Has anything come of any of those?
I really would like to see a C to bytecode compiler and an accompanying
lightweight VM to run the bytecode. I imagine the VM would be extremely
simple (relatively speaking at least), lightweight, and fast if the only
functionality was similar to standard ANSI C. This would allow easy
embedding of the VM in applications. Especially if it allowed direct
calling to/from native (binary) system libraries.
This would be very useful as a lightweight cross-platform system that
didn't require recompiling for each target and kept the simplicity of C.
Dynamically loading code off the network and running directly from
memory would be much easier as well.
Targeting TCC bytecode to a new processor would be as easy as porting
the VM to that processor using pre-existing compiler tools for that
hardware; no machine code messiness.
The Quake3 game engine actually has a VM and compiler that is pretty
close to exactly what I speak of but unfortunately it's GPL'd so not all
that useful for commercial embedding.
--
// Chris
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