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lab06-description.md 4.97 KiB

Labs 06: Compiler extension project

You have now written a compiler for Amy, a simple functional language. The final lab project is to design and implement a new functionality of your own choice on top of the compiler you built so far. In preparation for this, you should aim to learn about the problem domain by searching the appropriate literature. The project includes:

  • designing and implementing the new functionality
  • documenting the results in a written report document

This project has several deadlines, detailed below. Please note that the first of them (choosing the topic) is already coming up on this Thursday! Use the sessions on Wednesday and Thursday morning to discuss your own ideas or choices.

Selecting a Project Topic

Deadline: Thursday December 1st

In the following document, we list several project ideas, but you should also feel free to submit your own. All groups will rank the projects in order of preference, and we will then do our best to assign the preferred projects to as many groups as possible. Because not all projects are equally difficult, we annotated each of them with the expected workload. The suggested projects cover a wide range of complexity, and we will evaluate your submissions with that complexity in mind. For instance, for a project marked with (1) (relatively low complexity) we will be expecting a polished, well-tested and well-documented extension, whereas projects on the other end ((3)) may be more prototypical. For all submissions, however, we require that you deliver code that compiles and a set of example input files that demonstrate the new functionality.

Project ideas

To announce your preferences, please fill out this form on Moodle before the deadline. You'll have to provide the numbers corresponding to the top exactly 5 projects you would like to work on, in order of descending preference. We will do our best to assign you the project you are most interested in.

Project Orientation

We will try to inform you about the project assignment during the usual Wednesday and Thursday sessions. We ask you to be proactive and validate with the assistants your understanding of the project goals and the expectations of the end product. Think about the following questions and feel free to ask the assistants about them during the exercise sessions:

  • What are the features you will add to the compiler/language?
  • What would be some (short) programs highlighting the use of these features?
  • What changes might be required in each compiler phase and/or what new phases would you add? (Very roughly)

Project Presentation

You will present your idea during the last two weeks of the semester (Dec 14/15/19/21/22). We'll announce the concrete schedule of presentations at a later point. Instructions on what and how to present your project can be found here.

Project Implementation and Report

You will develop your project on top of your implementation of Amy. Please push all development on a new branch clplab6, ideally building on top of the codegen lab. We will refer to this branch in case of problems with your submission.

Deadline: Monday January 9th, 23:59

Submission: content of the clplab6 branch.

Final form of your submission should contain:

  • Your implementation, which must, to be graded at all, compile and be able to run non-trivial examples.
  • A subdirectory extension-examples/ which includes at least 5 examples that demonstrate your compiler extension in action.
  • A subdirectory report/ which includes a PDF summarizing your extension.
  • A subdirectory slides/ which includes the PDF of the project presentation.
  • A README file indicating how we should run and test the implemented functionality, with examples.

If you did not manage to complete your planned features, or they are partially implemented, make this clear in your report!

You are encouraged to use the following (LaTeX) template for your report:

A PDF version of the template with the required section is available here:

Although you are not required to use the above template, your report must contain at least the sections described in it with the appropriate information. Note that writing this report will take some time, and you should not do it in the last minute. The final report is an important part of the compiler project. If you have questions about the template or the contents of the report, make sure you ask them early.

A common question is "how long should the report be?". There's no definitive answer to that. Considering that the report will contain code examples and a technical description of your implementation, it would be surprising if it were shorter than 3 pages. Please try to stay within 6 pages. A concise, but well-written report is preferable to a long, but poorly-written one.