Octave compiler

[Rob Vermaas]

Hi there,

In our group we are currently working on a compiler for Octave. The 
compiler translates Octave code to C++ code. The compiler is implemented 
mostly in Stratego (see www.stratego.org).

It consists of the following packages:
 - octave-front, the front-end, containing parser etc.
 - octave-opt, the optimizer
 - octave-tc, the type checker/inferencer
 - octave2c, back-end

We are hoping to have a first release at the end of this month. This 
release will have quite some limitations though, among others
 - variables should not change types
 - no eval/feval
 - limited support for built-in functions
 - no lists
 - no streamoffs
 - no int8/16/... etc. (as we based the compiler on octave-2.1.57)
 - lots of bugs ;-)

If you are interested and want to check out what exactly we are doing, 
it is possible to access the compiler packages at 
https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/octave/trunk/octave-top/.

That said, I have a small feature-request (sorry if this is the wrong 
list to post this on). We are using mkoctfile in the back-end of the 
compiler. At the moment I'm patching mkoctfile manually to allow .oct 
files to be passed as object files when compiling a stand-alone 
application. I was wondering if it is possible to add this to the 
mkoctfile in Octave itself, or are there any objections to this? I have 
attached a patch to this email.

greetings,

Rob Vermaas



--- octave-2.1.58/mkoctfile.in  2004-09-02 03:28:49.000000000 +0200
+++ octave/mkoctfile.in 2004-09-08 10:37:02.000000000 +0200
@@ -106,6 +106,10 @@
       file=$1
       objfiles="$objfiles $file"
     ;;
+    *.oct)
+      file=$1
+      objfiles="$objfiles $file"
+    ;;
     -d | --debug | -v | --verbose)
       dbg=echo
     ;;
@@ -172,6 +176,7 @@
                             .f    Fortran source
                             .F    Fortran source
                             .o    object file
+                            .oct  object file
 
 EOF
       exit 0