# Copyright (C) 2001-2012, Parrot Foundation.

=pod

=head1 NAME

docs/imcc/README.pod - Readme file for IMCC. 

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This README sets out the Intermediate Code Compiler (IMCC) for Parrot. The
language it compiles is currently termed Parrot Intermediate Language (PIR).

Why? Writing a compiler is a significant undertaking, and we are trying 
to elevate some of the burden on potential language designers, including the
designers of the Perl6 compiler. We can provide a common back-end for Parrot
that does the following:

=over 4

=over 8

=item Register Allocation and Spillage

=item Constant folding and expression evaluation

=item Instruction selection

=item Optimization

=item Bytecode generation

=back

=back

This way, language designers can get right to work on

=over 4

=over 8

=item tokenizing, parsing, type checking AST/DAG production

=back

=back

They, then, can simply feed PIR to IMCC which will compile directly to Parrot
bytecode.[*]

=head2 Register Allocation

The allocator uses graph-coloring and du-chains to assign registers to
lexicals and symbolic temporaries. One weakness of the allocator is the lack
of branch analysis. A brute force method is used in the du-chain computation
where we assume any symbol is live from the time it was first used until
either the last time it was used or the last branch instruction. This is
being replaced with directed graphs of basic blocks and flow analysis.

=head2 Optimization

We break the instructions into a directed graph of basic blocks. The plan is
to translate to SSA form to make optimizations easier.

=head2 Why C and Bison?

Until Perl6 compiles itself (and does it fast), a Bison parser is the easiest
to maintain. An additional, important benefit, is C-based parsers are pretty
darn fast. Currently assembling Parrot on the fly is still relatively slow.

Instructions not known to IMCC are looked up in parrot's op_info_table and
must have the proper amount and types of arguments.

=head1 FEEDBACK, PATCHES, etc.

Please email parrot-dev@lists.parrot.org with any bug-reports or patches.

=head1 AUTHORS

=over 4

=item Original Author:

Melvin Smith <melvin.smith@mindspring.com>, <melvins@us.ibm.com>

=item Contributing Authors:

=over 8

=item Angel Faus <afaus@corp.vlex.com> ... CFG, life analysis

=item Sean O'Rourke <seano@cpan.org>   ... anyop, iANY

=item Leopold Toetsch <lt@toetsch.at>  ... major rewrite

=item .................................... numerous bugfixes/cleanup/rewrite

=item .................................... optimizer.c

=item .................................... run parrot code inside IMCC

=item Juergen Boemmels <boemmels@physik.uni-kl.de>

=item .................................... Macro preprocessor

=back

=back

=head1 NOTE

[*] So far, all the compiler does is register allocation and spilling. I like
Steve Muchnick's MIR language, and I'm taking a few things from it.

I expect the IR compiler to be FAST, simple, and maintainable, and never
to develop featuritis; however I want it to be adequate for all languages
targeting parrot. Did I mention it needs to be FAST?

=head1 COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2001-2012, Parrot Foundation.

=cut