Compilering

So a few months ago Xyhpoid contacted me about the work I did on Dusk some time ago to see if I still had the source. Indeed I did, but I hadn't touched it for 10 years, left it in a half-arsed state, and can't remember much of where it was at or what I wanted to do with it.

Still, at the moment i've got a lot of time on my hands and not much to do with it so I started poking around again. Amongst some minor phaffing about I decided to look at writing a compiler for the dusk script language that compiles directly to the JVM.

It's been a somewhat interesting exercise, from parser for a custom language to generator for class files. A probably goal is to create a new dusk script - it will be something like a relaxed java but with more security by limiting access to classes and functions via white-lists.

Apart from something interesting to play another motiviator is the dropping of nashorn from the OpenJDK. I did a quick survey of extant JVM languages looking for something sutiable but despite a proliferation in the earlier days of Java most have been abandonded, and even those that haven't haven't updated to handle the java modules system or the deprecation for removal of SecurityManager. Another problem is that most give unfettered access to the whole JDK in one way or another which isn't acceptable for my use case.

Anyway some of the exploratory work is going on in the compilerz project. There is also some work going on in duskz but i haven't pushed it stream yet.