Programming language Dino and its implementation

Develepment version of future release 0.98

Vladimir Makarov, vmakarov@gcc.gnu.org

Apr 2, 2016

Description Layout

• Introduction to Dino
  • History
  • Dino as a high-level scripting language
  • Dino as a functional language
  • Dino as an object-oriented language
• Dino Implementation
  • Overall Structure
    • Used implementation tools
    • Byte code compiler (optimizations)
    • Byte code Interpreter (GC, Concurrency, REPL)
    • JIT, Type inference
  • Performance comparison with Python, PyPy, Ruby, JS, Scala, OCAML on x86-64, AARH64, ARM, PPC64.

---

Some history

• 1993: Original language design and implementation
  • Was used in russian computer game company ANIMATEK as a simple scripting language for describing dinosaurus movements
• 1998, 2002, 2007, 2016 : Major language and implementation revisions
• This document describes the current state of Dino language and its implementation.

The first taste of Dino

• Eratosthenes sieve:

      var i, prime, k, count = 0, SieveSize = 8191, flags = [SieveSize : 1];
      for (i = 0; i < SieveSize; i++)
        if (flags[i]) {
          prime = i + i + 3;
          k = i + prime;
          for (;;) {
            if (k >= SieveSize)
              break;
            flags[k] = 0;
            k += prime;
          }
          count++;
        }
      putln (count);

---

DINO as a scripting language

• Dino aims to look like C language
• High-Level scripting object-oriented language:
  • Multi-precision integers
  • Heterogeneous extensible arrays, array slices
  • Associative tables with possibility to delete elements
  • Powerful and safe class composition operation for (multiple) inheritance and traits description
  • First class functions, classes, and fibers with closures, anonymous functions, classes, fibers
  • Exception handling
  • Concurrency
  • Pattern matching
  • Unicode 8 support

---

Arrays and Tables

• Associative tables
  • elements can be added and deleted
  • elements can be any values, e.g. other tables
  • Implemented as hash tables without buckets for compactness and data locality
    • Secondary hash for conflict resolutions
    • Murmur hash function for most values

---

Array Slices

• Eratosthenes sieve with slices:

      var i, prime, count = 0, SieveSize = 8191, flags = [SieveSize : 1];
      for (i = 0; i < SieveSize; i++)
        if (flags[i]) {
          prime = i + i + 3;
          flags[i + prime:SieveSize:prime] = 0;
          count++;
        }
      putln (count);

---

Functions

• Example:

      fun even;
      fun odd  (i) {i == 0 ? 0 : even (i - 1);}
      fun even (i) {i == 0 ? 1 : odd (i - 1);}
      putln (odd (1_000_000));

• Anonymous functions:

      filter (fun (a) {a > 0;}, v);
      fold (fun (a, b) {a * b;}, v, 1);

• Function closures:

      fun incr (base) {fun (incr) {base + incr;}}

---

Threads

• Fiber: a function with concurrent execution

      fiber t (n) {for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) putln (i);}
      t(100); // the following code don't wait for t finish
      for (var i = 0; i < 1000; i++) putln (“main”, i);

• Implemented as green threads:
  • Much faster than OS threads with Global Interpreter Lock (Python/Ruby)
  • Deterministic behaviour and automatic deadlock recognition
  • Plans to implement through OS threads without GIL for parallelism
• There is a low level sync-statement wait

      wait (cond) [stmt];

• Simple statements are atomic

---

Object orientation

• Class is just a special type of function:
  • Returns closure, public visibility by default

          class num (i) {fun print {put (i);}}
          class binop (l, r) { fun print_op;
            fun print {l.print(); print_op (); r.print ();}
          }

• Special class/function composition:
  • emulates (multiple) inheritance, traits, and dynamic dispatching

          class add (l, r) {
            use binop former l, r later print_op;
            fun print_op {put (“ + “);}
          }

---

Object orientation -- continuation

• A safe and powerful way to support object orientation
  • Declarations of class mentioned in use are inlayed
  • Declarations before the use rewrite corresponding inlayed declarations mentioned in former-clause
  • Declarations after the use rewrite corresponding inserted declarations mentioned in later-clause
  • The declarations should be matched
  • The original and new declarations should be present if they are in former- or later-clause
  • The original declaration can be renamed and still used instead of just rewriting if necessary

---

Object orientation -- continuation

• Special function isa to check subtyping of class or object:

      isa (add, binop);
      isa (add (num (1), num (2)), binop);

• Optimization for removing code duplication
• Syntactic sugar for a singleton object (it is implemented as anonymous class and corresponding object creation)

      obj int_pair {
        val min = 0, max = 10;
      }

---

Object orientation -- continuation

• Optimizations for access to object members permit to use objects as name spaces

      obj sorts {
        var compare_fun;
        fun quick_sort (...) {...}
        fun heap_sort (...) {...}
      }
      ...
      sorts.fft (...);

• To make access to object more brief an expose-clause exists
• Exposing an object member

      expose sorts.quick_sort;
      quick_sort (...);

• You can have a member access with a different name

      expose sorts.quick_sort (asort);
      asort (...);

• You can expose all public declarations of an object

      expose sorts.*;
      compare_fun = ...; quick_sort (...); heap_sort (...);

---

Standard spaces

• Dino has 5 standard spaces (singleton objects) avalaible by default to any Dino program
  • lang -- provides interface to fundamental Dino features
  • io -- provides interface for input/output and to work with file system
  • sys -- provides interace to some features of underlying OS
  • math -- mostly provides some mathematical functions
  • re -- provides regular expression matching functions
  • yaep -- provides interface to Yet Another Earley Parser
• All items in spaces lang and io are always exposed
• If you redefine some exposed item, you still can have access to it as a member of the space.

---

Pattern matching

• Pattern can be
  • pattern matching anything _
  • pattern variable matching any value, e.g. a
  • the value is assigned to the variable
  • vector pattern matching vectors, e.g. [v, _, 5, ...]
  • table pattern matching tables, e.g. tab ["a": v, ...]
  • object pattern matching objects of given class or its derived class, e.g. node (a, 10)
  • ... in a pattern list matching zero or more values
  • expression which looks different from the above and matches the equal value
  • pattern can be nested, e.g. node ([v, ...], 10)
• Pattern matching in variable declaration, e.g. var [a, b, ...] = v;
  • v should be a vector with at least 2 elements, new declared variables a and b will hold values of the two first elements

---

Pattern matching -- pmatch statement

    pmatch (v) {
      case [...]: putln ("array"); continue;
      case [a, ...]: if (a == 0) break; putln ("array with non-zero 1st element");
      case node (v) if v != 0: putln ("object of class node with nozero parameter");
      case _: putln ("any but array");
    }

• Try to match value with case patterns in a particular order, execute the corresponding code for the first matched pattern
• Scope of pattern variables is the corresponding case
• Continue means continue to try subsequent patterns
• Break means finish the match statement execution
  • There is an implicit break at the end of each case

---

Example: classes and functions with pattern matching

• Simple binary tree and its check:

      class tree {}
      class leaf (i) {use tree;}
      class node (l, r) {use tree;}

      fun exists_leaf (test, t) {
        pmatch (t) {
          case leaf (v): return test (v);
          case node (l, r):
            return exists_leaf (test, l) || exists_leaf (test, r);
        }
      }

      fun has_odd_leaf (t) {
        exists_leaf (fun (n) {type (n) == int && n % 2 == 1;}, t);
      }

Regular expression matching -- rmatch statement

    rmatch (str) {
      case "[a-zA-Z]+": putln ("word starting at ", m[0]);
      case "[0-9]+": putln ("number starting at ", m[0]);
      case _: putln ("anything else, m is undefined");
    }

• Try to match string with case regular expressions in a particular order, execute the corresponding code for the first matched regular expression
• Implicitly declared variable m contains integer vector describing successfully matched sub-string
• Scope of variable m is the corresponding case
• Continue and break statements behave the same way as in pattern match statement

---

Exception handling

• Exceptions are objects of sub-classes of class except
  • Exceptions can be generated by Dino interpreter, e.g. floating point exception
  • or by throw-statement:

            class my_except (msg) {use except;}
            throw my_except ("my special exceptions");

• Exceptions can be processed by try-block or try-operator
  • Exceptions are propagated to previous blocks on the block stack until they are processed
  • Unprocessed exceptions finish the program execution

Exception handling -- continuation

• Try-block
  • Exception occurring inside the block is processed in the first catch-block whose class mentioned in the catch clauses is a super-class of the processed exception class
  • The processed exception is in variable e implicitly defined in the corresponding catch-block
  • If there is no matched catch-block, the exception is propagated further

            try {
              var ln;
              for (;;) {
                var ln = getln (); putln (ln);
              }
            } catch (eof) { putln ("end of file"); }

• Try-operator
  • The operator returns non-zero if no exceptions occurs in the statement given as the first argument
  • The operator returns zero if an exception occurs and its class is a sub-class (see isa) of one exception class given by the subsequent arguments
  • If there is no matched argument class, the exception is propagated further

            var ln;
            for (; try (ln = getln (), eof);) putln (ln);

• In the previous example, try (ln = getln (), eof) can be considered as abbreviation of anonymous function call:

            fun {try {ln = getln (); return 1;} catch (eof) {return 0;} ()

Earley parser

• Predefined class for language prototyping:
  • Fast. Processing ~400K lines/sec of 67K lines of C program using 26MB memory on modern CPUs
  • Simple syntax directed translation
  • Parsing input can be described by ambiguous grammar:
    • Can produce compact representation of all possible parse trees
    • Can produce minimal cost parsing tree
  • Syntax recovery with minimal number of ignored tokens still producing a correct AST

---

Earley parser -- tiny language example

expose yaep.*;
val grammar =
 "TERM ident=301, num=302, if=303, then=304, for=305, do=307, var=308;
  program = program stmt                     # list (0 1)
  stmt = ident '=' expr ';'                  # asgn (0 2)
       | if expr then stmt else stmt         # if (1 3 5)
       | for ident '=' expr expr do stmt     # for (1 3 4 6)
       | '{' program '}'                     # block (1)
       | var ident ';'                       # var (1)
       | error
  expr = expr '+' factor                     # plus (0 2)
  factor = factor '*' term                   # mult (0 2)
  term = ident                               # 0
       | '(' expr ')'                        # 1";
val p = parser ();       // create an Earley parser
p.set_grammar (grammar); // set grammar
fun syntax_error;        // forward decl of syntax error reporting func
val asbtract_tree = p.parse (token_vector, syntax_error);

---

Implementation -- General Structure

• In usual mode, all program files are processed.
• In REPL mode, a statement goes all processing.
• All program Byte Code (Bcode) can be saved in a readable form, modified, and read for execution.
• Function level JIT is implemented with the aid of C compiler.
• The program can use object files created from a C code (through Foreign Function Interface).

---

Implementation -- Byte Code

• Byte Code (Bcode) consists of
  • Declarations
    • vdecl (variable)
    • fdecl (functions, classes, fibers)
  • Multi-operand instructions
    • Operations (1-5 ops, usually 3-ops)
    • Control flow insns (blocks, branches, calls etc)
• 2 Bcode representations:
  • one in memory (for execution)
  • readable representation (can be modified manually)

---

Implementation -- Byte Code example

• Dino code

      var i, n = 1000;
      for (i = 0; i < n; i++);

• Readable BCode representation:

      0 block fn="ex.d" ln=1 pos=1 next=730 vars_num=29 tvars_num=3 // ident=
      ...
      372 vdecl fn="ex.d" ln=1 pos=5 ident=i ident_num=268 decl_scope=0 var_num=27
      373 vdecl pos=8 ident=n ident_num=269 decl_scope=0 var_num=28
      ...
      788 ldi fn="ex.d" ln=1 pos=12 op1=28 op2=1000 // 28 <- i1000
      789 ldi ln=2 pos=10 next=791 op1=27 op2=0 // 27 <- i0
      790 btltinc pos=15 next=792 op1=27 binc_inc=1 bcmp_op2=28 bcmp_res=29 pc=790
                                          // goto 790 if 29 <- (27 += i1) cmp 28
      791 btlt pos=15 op1=27 bcmp_op2=28 bcmp_res=29 pc=790 // goto 790 if 29 <- 27 cmp 28
      792 bend pos=17 block=0

---

Implementation -- BC optimizations

• Optimizations
  • High-level dead code elimination
  • Jump optimization
  • Call tail optimization
  • Inlining
  • Pure function optimization
  • Byte code combining (this is just an illustration, the readable BCode representation has a bit different format -- see the previous slide)

            label: addi op1, op1, i1; lt res, op1, op2; bt res, label =>
            label: addi op1, op1, i1; blt res, op1, op2, label =>
            label: btltinc op1, op2, i2, res, label

---

Implementation

• Fast optimizing interpreter
• Memory Handling and Garbage Collection:
  • Automatically extended heap
  • Simple escape analysis to transform heap allocations into stack ones
  • Combination of Mark and Sweep and fast Mark and Copy algorithm permitting to decrease program memory requirement

---

Implementation -- Continuation

• JIT
  • Function Level for functions marked by hint (! jit)

            fun fact (n) !jit {n <=1 ? 1 : n * fact (n - 1);}

• JIT details:
  • Triggered by the first call
  • Portable implementation through C code generation
    • memory file system is used (can be persistent memory in future)
    • option --save-temps can be used for the C code inspecting
  • Usage of the same code as interpreter to simplify implementation
    • C code generator is less 100 lines on C
    • a script used to minimize the code (about 1/10 of C code interpreter definitions are used for generated code.)
  • Small function code generation takes about 50-70ms using GCC on modern Intel CPUs

---

Implementation -- Type Inference

• Dino is dynamic type programming language
• Still many types of operations can be recognized during compilation time:
  • E.g. general Bcode add can be changed by iadd (integer variant) or fadd (floating point variant) which are executed without operand type checking
• Type recognition (inference) is very important for better object code generation, especially for JIT
  • It can speed up code in many times

---

Implementation -- Type Inference 2

• Major steps:
  1. Building CFG (control flow graph) of all program: basic blocks and CFG edges connecting them
  2. Calculating available results of Bcode insns -- a forward data-flow problem on CFG
  3. Using the availability, building def-use chains connecting operands and results of Bcode insns and variables
  4. Calculating types of Bcode insn operands and results -- another forward data flow problem on the built def-use graph
  5. Changing Bcode insns on specialized ones, e.g. add on iadd

---

Implementation -- Type Inference 3

• Major complications:
  • Higher order functions
  • Closures
  • Threads
  • Possible use of variable (undefined) value before assigning a value to it
• Therefore we don't recognize all types theoretically possible to recognize
• Recognizing types of variable values even if the variable changes its type -- difference to type inference in static type languages

---

Implementation -- Tools and libraries

• Dino is implemented with COCOM tools
  • SPRUT - compiler of IR object oriented description. Used for implementation of semantic IR, Bcode and run-time data. In debugging mode, it permits to check all described constraints and relations
  • MSTA - faster superset of YACC with better error recovery
  • SHILKA - fast keyword recognizer generator
  • AMMUNITION - different packages (source position handling, error reporting, Earley parser etc)
• GMP - multi-precision integer library
• Oniguruma regexp library (version 6.0.0)

---

Implementation -- Profiling

• Typical performance tuning: Profiling: dino -p meteor.d

      ** Calls *** Time **** Name **************************************
        761087     0.43  --  search1: "meteor.d": 229
        561264     0.07  --  ctz: "meteor.d": 28
          1260     0.01  --  GoodPiece: "meteor.d": 37
           ...
                   0.51  --  All Program

• Adding hints: !inline for ctz and !jit for search1

      ** Calls *** Time **** Name **************************************
        761087     0.15  --  search1: "meteor.d": 229
           ...
             0     0.00  --  ctz: "meteor.d": 28
           ...
                   0.17  --  All Program

---

Implementation -- C Interface

• Dino has declarations to describe C functions and variables external to Dino programs. For example, the following describes external variable v and function f

      extern v, f ();

• The variable v in C code will be of type val_t. The function f in C code will have teh following prototype

      val_t f (int npars, val_t *args);

• The file d_api.h provides C descriptions of Dino internals (the type val_t, functions to create vectors, tables etc). The file is generated from SPRUT description d_extern.d
• The external C code is responsible for providing correct Dino values
• There are two ways to use C code: pre-compiled and compiled on the fly

---

Implementation -- C Interface 2

• C code for pre-compiled way should look like

      #include d_api.h
      ...
      val_t v;
      ...
      val_t f (int n_pars, val_t *args) {
        ER_node_t first_arg = (ER_node_t) &args[0];
        if (npars == 1 && ER_NODE_MODE (first_arg) == ER_NM_int)
      <do something with integer value> ER_i (first_arg);
    ...
      }

• External variables and functions in C code preliminary compiled as shared objects can be used if Dino knows where the objects are located
  • The option -L provides such knowledge. For example, options -L/home/dino/obj1.so -L../obj2.so says Dino to load the shared objects
  • Externals will be searched in some standard objects first, then in objects provided by options -L in the same order as they stay on the command line
• A standard Dino external C code in file d_socket.c from Dino sources can be used as an example of pre-compiled C code

---

Implementation -- C Interface 3

• C code compiled on the fly looks in Dino code like

      %{
        ...
        val_t f (int n_pars, val_t *args) {
          ...
        }
      %}
      extern f ();
      val r = f(10);

• All C code between pairs of brackets %{ and %} in one Dino file is concatenated
• The result code with pre-appended code from d_api.h is compiled when the execution the first time achieves the location of the first %{
• The result shared object is loaded and external variables and functions are searched lately also in this object as it was described in pre-compiled C code
• To check all C code before execution you can use option --check

---

Code Metrics

• sloccount output as of 2/18/2016 for Dino + tools:

    Totals grouped by language (dominant language first):
    sh:          265452 (54.10%)
    ansic:       194472 (39.64%)
    yacc:         23297 (4.75%)
    cpp:           7403 (1.51%)

• Dino directory only:

    Totals grouped by language (dominant language first):
    sh:          161561 (62.13%)
    ansic:        95124 (36.58%)
    yacc:          3365 (1.29%)

---

Benchmarking -- Programs

• Some old computer language shootout benchmarks:
  • loop - empty loop body
  • hash - associative tables
  • fact, fib - factorial and fibonacci (recursive functions with and without tail recursion)
  • exceptions, methods, objects - exception processing, object method calls, and object instantiations
  • sieve, sort - Eratosthenes sieve and heapsort (array benchmarking)
  • statistics, random - statistical moments and random number generator (general arithmetic)
  • threads (producer-consumer threads)
  • startup - compilation and execution of empty program
  • compile - very long code of assignments

---

Benchmarking -- Languages and CPUs

• Benchmarking on x86-64 (i5-4670 - 3.4GHz Haswell), AARCH64 (X-gene), ARM (Exynos 5410 - 1.6GHz Cortex-A15), PPC64 (3.5GHz power7) and comparison with:
  • Other interpreters (Python-3.4.x, Ruby-2.1.x)
  • Different JITs (PyPy-2.2.x - trace JIT for Python, JavaScript-1.8.x
    • SpiderMonkey/TraceMonkey, Scala-2.10.x - JVM)
  • Byte code compiler and interpreter (OCAML-4.0.x)
• Dino compilation and execution time is a base in the comparison

---

Benchmarking -- x86-64

	Loop	Hash	Fact	Fib	Except	Method	Object	Sieve	Sort	Stat.	Random	Thread	Start	Compile
Dino[^1]	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^3]	1.0[^3]	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^4]	1.0	1.0	1.0
Dino	19	1.0	13.2	112	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.4	1.0	3.1	1.0	1.0	1.0
Python	257	2.4	90.4	492	9.7	5.8	4.4	37.9	13.3	2.6	26.9	125	10.9	3.3
Ruby	157	2.2	25.2	142	5.5	1.5	1.4	4.5	4.5	3.5	12.4	43.6	29.4	1.8
PyPy	8.1	0.4	0.4	59	0.4	0.2	0.1	4.5	1.4	1.3	0.9	47.0	22.1	17.8
JS	151	1.4	33.3	211	-	-	-	5.5	0.6	-	0.5	-	1.1	0.8
Scala	9.6	1.6	2.8	147	60.3	1.2	0.7	2.4	0.7	9.4	1.2	-	352	-[^5]
Ocaml	34.4	1.0	5.2	69	0.3	0.5	0.8	1.8	1.8	3.2	2.2	-	5,3	283

[^1]: Dino best result. [^2]: Dino JIT hint was used. [^3]: Dino pure func hint was used. [^4]: Dino inline hint was used. [^5]: Scala can not even handle 10 times smaller code.

---

Benchmarking -- AARCH64

	Loop	Hash	Fact	Fib	Except	Method	Object	Sieve	Sort	Stat.	Random	Thread	Start	Compile
Dino[^1]	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^3]	1.0[^3]	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^4]	1.0	1.0	1.0
Dino	17.5	1.7	13.1	265	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.4	1.0	2.2	1.0	1.0	1.0
Python	222	0.5	68.8	1116	12.4	4.7	2.8	40.3	5.3	2.5	15.5	149	246	2.6
Ruby	170	2.8	32.3	542	6.0	1.7	1.4	8.5	3.7	3.8	13.1	118	655	1.6
JS	282	1.4[^6]	31.6	471	-	-	-	16.2	2.5	-	6.5	-	1.0	0.5
Ocaml	44.7	1.2	5.0	166	0.3	0.5	0.9	2.6	2.1	4.0	3.5	-	82.7	232

• Python v2.7.5 was used as Python3 is absent.
• PyPy and Scala are not implemented yet.

[^6]: Non-JIT JS was used as JIT failed.

---

Benchmarking -- ARM

	Loop	Hash	Fact	Fib	Except	Method	Object	Sieve	Sort	Stat.	Random	Thread	Start	Compile
Dino[^1]	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^3]	1.0[^3]	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^4]	1.0	1.0	1.0
Dino	4.2	1.0	18.1	490	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.8	1.0	2.5	1.0	1.0	1.0
Python	28.2	0.6	4.4	1600	11.7	3.4	5.1	19.3	6.7	2.2	17.5	157	10.9	2.7
Ruby	31.5	2.6	71.2	651	6.3	1.3	1.7	4.8	4.0	3.3	11.3	174	12.7	1.7
PyPy	103	1.4	151	4158	9.9	12.1	7.9	42.1	11.7	5.5	30.4	485	7.2	[^7]
JS	29.8	1.4[^6]	32.2	634	-	-	-	4.1	0.4	-	0.4	-	1.1	0.7
Scala	7.4	8.2	6.4	2396	6.9	1.2	1.0	5.8	0.7	19	1.2	-	109	[^7]
Ocaml	13.8	1.0	8.8	327	0.4	0.6	1.0	2.5	2.2	3.3	1.7	-	3.0	[^7]

[^7]: PyPy, Scala, and Ocaml failed to compile long code.

---

Benchmarking - PPC64

	Loop	Hash	Fact	Fib	Except	Method	Object	Sieve	Sort	Stat.	Random	Thread	Start	Compile
Dino[^1]	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^3]	1.0[^3]	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0[^2]	1.0	1.0[^4]	1.0	1.0	1.0
Dino	23.2	1.0	16.2	222	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	4.3	1.0	4.4	1.0	1.0	1.0
Python	182	1.5	51.0	965	15.1	3.6	4.1	29.8	7.5	2.0	15.7	160	5.1	5.0
Ruby	17.6	1.7	43.0	390	20.0	1.6	3.1	7.6	4.2	5.2	11.4	62.8	46.1	1.5
JS	27.0	3.0	53.8	453	-	-	-	14.2	2.8	-	4.6	-	2.7	0.7
Ocaml	33.2	1.8	5.4	133	0.3	0.4	1.5	3.7	2.6	4.8	3.9	-	4.4	360

• PyPy is not implemented for PPC64.
• Scala was not available.

---

Implementation - Conclusions

• A lot of research was done on Dino implementation (see article about this)
• It can be used to improve performance of popular dynamic language implementations:
  • to make them faster
  • to make them more portable
  • to require less resources (compilation time and memory)
  • to have very quick start up and big compiler speed

---

Future directions of research

• Type annotation. Two goals:
  • More cases for compile type checking which is in a direction of Dino language development (introduction of early undefined value recognition, the same number of actual and formal parameter numbers etc.)
  • Faster code generated by JIT
• Light-weight direct JIT
  • Using GCC for JIT is portable but too heavy for some system as CYGWIN
  • Direct JIT from bytecode to machine instructions is necessary
  • Goal is very fast code generation and simple fast optimizations to decrease memory traffic
  • With type inference and type annotation the direct JIT can achives 1/2-1/3 of speed optimized C code for majority of programs

---

Dino availability

• Dino has been implemented for
  • Linux
  • Windows through CYGWIN
  • MacOSX
  • X code and GMP package is necessary to build Dino
• Dino site: http://dino-lang.github.io
• DINO and COCOM repository: https://github.com/dino-lang/dino.git
• License -- GPL 2 and LGPL 2:
  • See files COPYING and COPYING.LIB

---

Dino Building

• See file INSTALL for details
• Configure in a build directory:

      <dino-path>/configure --srcidir=<dino-path> --prefix=<install-path>

• Configure in a debug mode: -O0 and full IR checking (it makes DINO several times slower):

      <dino-path>/configure --srcidir=<dino-path> --prefix=<install-path> --enable-debug

• Make:

      make

• Testing all COCOM and DINO:

      make check

• Testing only DINO (about 900 tests and benchmarking comparison with available implementations of other languages which can take a lot of time):

      cd DINO; make check

• Testig Dino is to run two shell scripts:

  • Tests are in file /DINO/dino.tst generated from DINO/dino.tst.in
  • Benchmarks are in file DINO/compare.tst

• Installing COCOM and DINO:

      make install

---