Repository dmacqueen/NewFrontEnd
Created by David MacQueen, 2024.09.14
An SML compiler front end (following the pattern of SML/NJ) includes lexical analysis, parsing, and "elaboration", where elaboration consists of variable binding analysis and type checking, taken to include the static analysis and static representation of the module system.
The resulting front end is not expected to conform completely with the Definition of Standard ML (Revised), and so may be considered a front end for a "Successor" ML. As a working name for the input source language, we are using simply "ML" (any suggestions?). The front end will process ML source files into a typed abstract syntax, with no commitments regarding the "middle end" or further stages of compilation (and thus no use of concepts or types dependent on, say, the FLINT middle end).
The plan is for the new front end to consist of a set of libraries (in roughly the CM sense). These libraries should be compatible with a future "library-ized" version of SML/NJ. It is likely that CM, or a revision thereof, will be required to compile these libraries [compile and build infrastructure].
This is essentially a fresh, "from scratch" implementation, but it is expected to borrow extensively from the current SML/NJ front end, and from the MacQueen/Kuan model of the internal representation and elaboration of modules.
This NewFrontEnd repository may at some point be moved to the smlnj github project.
== README.md: this file
This directory (cloned from the repository github.com/dmacqueen/NewFrontEnd) contains work related to the project to rebuild/restore the front end of SML/NJ, except that the language being processed is a version of successor ML called MsML. MsML is not backward compatible with (Standard)ML, but it is close.
= language
The file language/msml.txt contains a preliminary, informal sketch of a proposed micro-design alternative to (Standard) ML, under the title MsML ("MacQueen's (own version of) Successor ML").
= work
This directory contains informal notes on various topics under headings (subdirectories): meta, general, syntax, core, types, modules, theory, and compilation; see the file work/toc.txt for a table of contents.