Cyclone Scheme is a brand-new compiler that allows real-world application development using the R7RS Scheme Language standard. We provide modern features and a stable system capable of generating fast native binaries.
Cheney on the MTA is used by Cyclone's runtime to implement full tail recursion, continuations, and generational garbage collection. In addition, the Cheney on the MTA concept has been extended to allow execution of multiple native threads. An on-the-fly garbage collector is used to manage the second-generation heap and perform major collections without "stopping the world".
syntax-rules
You can run the Cyclone interpreter right in your browser. No installation required.
For the full user experience - compiling files, installing packages, running native code, etc - it is necessary to install a copy of Cyclone.
There are several installation options available:
Cyclone can be run from a Docker Image:
docker run -it cyclonescm/cyclone bash
Mac (and Linux!) users wanting to use Homebrew can do the following.
Note if Homebrew is not already installed: follow the instructions at https://brew.sh/ to install the homebrew package manager.
brew tap cyclone-scheme/cyclone
brew install cyclone-scheme/cyclone/cyclone-bootstrap
Arch Linux users can install using the AUR:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/cyclone-scheme.git
cd cyclone-scheme
makepkg -si
Cyclone is available from the official Gentoo package repository.
To install Cyclone on your machine for the first time on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and for Mac users wanting to install without using Homebrew, use cyclone-bootstrap to build a set of binaries. Instructions are provided for Linux, Mac, Windows (via MSYS), and FreeBSD 12.
After installing you can run the cyclone
command to compile a single Scheme file:
$ cyclone examples/fac.scm
$ examples/fac
3628800
And the icyc
command to start an interactive interpreter. Note you can use rlwrap
to make the interpreter more friendly, EG: rlwrap icyc
:
$ icyc
:@
@@@
@@@@:
`@@@@@+
.@@@+@@@
@@ @@ Cyclone Scheme->C compiler
,@ http://justinethier.github.io/cyclone/
'@
.@
@@ #@ (c) 2014-2019 Justin Ethier
`@@@#@@@. Version 0.11
#@@@@@
+@@@+
@@#
`@.
cyclone> (write 'hello-world)
hello-world
Read the documentation below for more information on how to use Cyclone.
The winds
package manager provides the ability to install packaged libraries and programs for Cyclone. See the winds site for more information.
The Winds wiki contains a full list of packages with documentation.
The User Manual covers in detail how to use Cyclone and provides information on the Scheme language features implemented by Cyclone.
An API Reference is available for all libraries provided by Cyclone, including a complete alphabetical listing.
A guide is provided for Scheme Code Conventions.
If you need a resource to start learning the Scheme language you may want to try a classic textbook such as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Finally, this benchmarks page by ecraven compares the performance of Cyclone with other Schemes.
Cyclone provides several example programs, including:
Tail Call Optimization - A simple example of Scheme tail call optimization; this program runs forever, calling into two mutually recursive functions.
Threading - Various examples of multi-threaded programs.
Game of Life - The Conway's game of life example program and libraries from R7RS.
Game of Life PNG Image Generator - A modified version of game of life that uses libpng to create an image of each iteration instead of writing it to console. This example also demonstrates basic usage of the C Foreign Function Interface (FFI).
Finally, the largest program is the compiler itself. Most of the code is contained in a series of libraries which are used by cyclone.scm
and icyc.scm
to create executables for Cyclone's compiler and interpreter.
Writing the Cyclone Scheme Compiler provides high-level details on how the compiler was written and how it works.
There is a Development Guide with instructions for common tasks when hacking on the compiler itself.
Cyclone's Garbage Collector is documented at a high-level. This document includes details on extending Cheney on the MTA to support multiple stacks and fusing that approach with a tri-color marking collector.
Copyright (C) 2014 Justin Ethier.
Cyclone is available under the MIT license.