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• Channel on /r/ProgrammingLanguages discord - Projects Q-Y -> Vox

Vox is a multiparadigm programming language inspired by D (60%), Jai (30%), and Zig (10%).

• Fast compilation
• Strong metaprogramming
• Can be used for scripting and standalone programs (both JIT and AOT compilation)
• No dependencies (except D compiler)

• Same syntax for most portions of the language (struct, function, enum, for, while, if, UFCS, slices, arrays)
• Conditional compilation
• Templates, Variadic templates, and functions
• C interoperability
• Modules / Packages

• No GC, minimal runtime, no classes (only structs), no exceptions
• More compile-time features, faster CTFE
• Using templates for heavy calculations is discouraged, instead, CTFE can be used for introspection, and code generation.
• Macros (WIP)
• No C++ interoperability

Supported:

• windows-x64 - host and target
• linux-x64 - host and target
• macos-x64 - only jit-mode

Planned:

• linux-arm64
• wasm
• windows-arm64?
• spirv (Vulkan/OpenCL/OpenGL shaders)

• Strong focus on application extensions
• Maximize user productivity
• Maximize application performance
• AOT and JIT, plugin support, runtime compilation, embedded compiler, tiered compilation
• Static typing
• Great error messages
• Fast / Incremental compilation
• Minimize effort needed for installation, setup, integration
  • Minimal dependencies/encapsulate dependency into module or package
  • Runtime as a library/minimal runtime/no runtime
  • Embedding/extern C
  • Code driven compilation, extending compiler from inside of the program being compiled
• Processor intrinsics
• Conditional compilation
• CTFE, Templates, Introspection, Code generation

i32fib(i32 number) {if (number<1)return0;if (number<3)return1;returnfib(number-1)+ fib(number-2);}structPoint {    i32 x;    i32 y;}T min[T](T a, T b) {if (a< b)return a;return b;}

• Cross-platform hello worldhttps://gist.github.com/MrSmith33/34a7557ad5ac23ebe6cf27bef15a39a6

• Fibonaccihttps://gist.github.com/MrSmith33/9645d9552b567fdbdc1a4d8822b4f1f7

• Fannkuchhttps://gist.github.com/MrSmith33/ac14e66a83b9d047793adede464ca1ef

• Roguelike tutorial using SDL2 -repo

• Voxel engine that uses Vox as a scripting language:Voxelman 2

• Example of JIT compilation for amd64 from D code:

  code

  // Source codestring source = q{voidtest(i32* array, i32 index, i32 value) {        array[index] = value;    }};// Error handling is omittedDriver driver;driver.initialize(jitPasses);scope(exit) driver.releaseMemory;driver.beginCompilation();driver.addModule(SourceFileInfo("test", source));driver.compile();driver.markCodeAsExecutable();// Get function pointerauto testFun = driver.context.getFunctionPtr!(void,int*,int,int)("test");// Use compiled functionint[2] val = [42,56];testFun(val.ptr,1,10);assert(val[1]==10);

Inmain.d uncomment one of the following lines:

//version = bench; // Runs benchmark//version = devtest; // Run single test with fine-tuned logging. Useful for development. Uses tester.runDevTests(). Toggle options there for precise analisys while developing.//version = test; // Runs test suite. Uses tester.runAllTests().

and run with:source> dmd -m64 -i main.d && main

Benchmarking:

ldc2 -d-version=bench -m64 -O3 -release -boundscheck=off -enable-inlining -flto=full -i main.d && main

Debug CLI build:

dmd -i -g -m64 -version=cli main.d -of=vox.exe

Release CLI build:

ldc2 -d-version=cli -m64 -O3 -release -boundscheck=off -enable-inlining -flto=full -mcpu=native -i main.d -of=vox.exe

Debug shared library build:

ldc2 -m64 -shared -g -d-debug -fvisibility=hidden -link-defaultlib-shared=false -i c_api.d -of=libvox.dll

Compiling with Profile Guided Optimization:

ldc2 -d-version=test -m64 -release -fprofile-instr-generate -mcpu=native -i main.d -of=vox_instrumented.exevox_instrumentedldc-profdata merge default.profraw -output vox.profdataldc2 -d-version=cli -m64 -O3 -release -boundscheck=off -enable-inlining -flto=full -mcpu=native -fprofile-instr-use=vox.profdata -i main.d -of=vox.exe

Gives the full list of flags

vox--help

• .vx files are source code files.
• .har files, akaHuman Readable Archive files. A text file that combines multiple textual files.

Each file must begin with--- <path>, three dashes, space, and name.

Files can be nested inside directories--- dir/dir2/file.txt.

Example:

--- main.vximport kernel32;voidmain() { ExitProcess(42); }--- kernel32.vx@extern(module,"kernel32")noreturnExitProcess(u32 uExitCode);

Can be compiled withvox program.har

The compiler contains embedded tools:

Prints content of vox.pdb file into stdout.

vox pdb-dump vox.pdb

To get some syntax highlighting on GitHub define.gitattributes file in the repository with the following content (docs):

*.vx linguist-language=D

All.vx files will be highlighted and classified as D.

• Vim

• Impl size: 40k LoC of D, 3MB exe
• Time to compile: 4s debug / 45s release
• Test suite: 95ms for 361 tests
• Time to compile 10MLoC of fibonacci: 8s on Windows, 7.5s on Linux

For more in detail description of implementation seeinternals.md