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Diffstat (limited to 'compiler/ic/design.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | compiler/ic/design.rst | 21 |
1 files changed, 20 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/compiler/ic/design.rst b/compiler/ic/design.rst index 60434e4b8..d8e1315b1 100644 --- a/compiler/ic/design.rst +++ b/compiler/ic/design.rst @@ -33,9 +33,28 @@ are rod-file specific too. Global state ------------ -Global persistent state will be kept in a project specific `.rod` file. +There is no global state. Rod File Format --------------- It's a simple binary file format. `rodfiles.nim` contains some details. + + +Backend +------- + +Nim programmers have to come to enjoy whole-program dead code elimination, +by default. Since this is a "whole program" optimization, it does break +modularity. However, thanks to the packed AST representation we can perform +this global analysis without having to unpack anything. This is basically +a mark&sweep GC algorithm: + +- Start with the top level statements. Every symbol that is referenced + from a top level statement is not "dead" and needs to be compiled by + the backend. +- Every symbol referenced from a referenced symbol also has to be + compiled. + +Caching logic: Only if the set of alive symbols is different from the +last run, the module has to be regenerated. |