Project Overview

You may do this assignment in OCaml, Python, JavaScript, Haskell or Ruby.

You may work in a team of two people for this assignment. You may work in a team for any or all subsequent programming assignments. You do not need to keep the same teammate. The course staff are not responsible for finding you a willing teammate.

Goal

You will also write additional code to unserialize the class map, implementation map, parent map, and annotated AST produced by the semantic analyzer.

The Specification

1. A program that takes a single command-line argument (e.g., file.cl-type). That argument will be an ASCII text Cool class map, implementation map, parent map and annotated AST file (as described in PA4). Your program must emit either Cool Assembly Language (file.cl-asm) or x86-64 Assembly Language (file.s). Your program will consist of a number of OCaml files, a number of Python files, or a number of Ruby files.
   • If you are targeting Cool Assembly Language, then executing file.cl-asm in a Cool CPU Simulator must produce the correct output for file.cl according to Cool's operational semantics.
   • If you are targeting x86-64, then compiling file.s with gcc on a 64-bit x86 Linux system must produce an executable that, when run, produces the correct output for file.cl according to Cool's operational semantics.
   • You will only be given .cl-type files from programs that pass the semantic analysis phase of the reference compiler. You are not responsible for correctly handling (1+"hello") programs.
2. A plain ASCII text file called readme.txt describing your design decisions and choice of test cases. See the grading rubric. A few paragraphs should suffice.
3. Testcases test1.cl, test2.cl, test3.cl and test4.cl. The testcases should exercise compiler and run-time error corner cases.

Assembly Language

Cool Assembly Language is a simplified RISC-style assembly language that is similar to Java Bytecode.

• Pro: It is dynamically "well typed", so if you produce assembly code that tries to add a string to a code label, the system will notice immediately (rather than producing garbage and unhelpfully crashing later).
• Pro: It is portable and works anywhere the Reference Compiler works.
• Pro: It abstracts away notions like system calls and string handling so that you can focus on code generation and layout.
• Pro: It has just enough instructions to directly compile Cool and no more — learning it is simple.
• Pro: It includes built-in debugging and tracing suppot.
• Con: Because it is a simualted bytecode, you cannot use GDB or Visual Studio to debug your output.
• Con: Because it is a simulated bytecode, you cannot actually "run the raw .exe" on your computer.

x86-64 Assembly Language is the real deal — it's what most desktop machines use.

• Pro: You get a strong feeling of accomplishment for working close to "the bare metal" and using a real-world assembly language.
• Pro: You can use GDB or Visual Studio to step through and debug your resulting executable.
• Pro: For the subsequent optimization assignment, you can use any instruction, power or trick that is x86-64 legal to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your code.
• Con: There are many dialect and syntax options of "x86 assembly language". This course only allows the 64-bit version supported by gcc on linux. If you can't run that on your development machine, you must use Cool Assembly.
• Con: You must handle all of the details, including laying out strings in memory and emitting assembly code that interfaces with standard library functions like malloc or scanf or exit to implement Cool's operational semantics.
• Con: You'll have to use GDB (or something similar) because there's no innate debugging support.
• Con: x86 assembly is infamous for being hideous. It's your funeral.

./cool --x86 hello-world.cl
gcc hello-world.s
./a.out

Although we're invoking gcc, that's just shorthand: it's calling as and collect2 and whatnot to assemble the .s file into an object file and link that object file into an executable. You can see the individual steps with gcc -v.

Error Reporting

However, you must generate file.cl-asm (or file.s) so that it checks for and reports run-time errors. When your file.{cl-asm,s} program detects an error, it should use the Syscall IO.out_string and Syscall exit assembly instructions to cause an error string to be printed to the screen.

To report an error, write the string ERROR: line_number: Exception: message (for example, using Syscall IO.out_string) and terminate the program with Syscall exit. You may generate your file.{cl-asm,s} so that it writes whatever you want in the message, but it should be fairly indicative. Example erroneous input:

class Main inherits IO {
  my_void_io : IO ; -- no initializer => void value
  main() : Object {
    my_void_io.out_string("Hello, world.\n")
  } ;
} ;

For such an input, you must generate a well-formed file.{cl-asm,s} assmebly language file. However, when that file is executed (either in a Cool CPU Simulator or on an x86-64 machine), it will produce output such as:

ERROR: 4: Exception: dispatch on void

• Stack overflow: undefined (not your responsibility)
• Division by zero: location of the division expression
• Substring out of range: location of the internal expression (i.e., 0)
• Dispatch on void: location of dispatch expression
• case-related errors: location of case expression

Commentary

You can do basic testing as follows:

• $ cool --asm file.cl-type
  $ cool file.cl-asm >& reference-output
  $ my-code-generator file.cl-type 
  $ cool file.cl-asm >& my-output
  $ diff my-output reference-output
  

Whitespace and newlines do not matter in your file.{cl-asm,s} assembly code. However, whitespace and newlines do matter for your simulated Cool CPU output. This is because you are specifically being asked to implement IO and substring functions.

You should implement all of the operational semantics rules in the Reference Manual. You will also have to implement all of the built-in functions on the five Basic Classes.

What To Turn In For PA6c

For the checkpoint, you will only be tested on hello-world.cl. If you can generate code for that, you pass the checkpoint. (Yes, you can "trick" the checkpoint by hard-coding output for that one test. Ultimately, however, you're only hurting yourself because you'll have more work to do later. This is not an honor violation.) You must turn in a zip file containing these files:

1. source_files -- your implementation, including
   • main.rb or
   • main.py or
   • main.js or
   • main.hs or
   • main.ml

• team.txt -- an optional file listing your other team member (see below -- if you are not working in a team, do not include this file)

What To Turn In For PA6

1. readme.txt -- your README file
2. test1.cl -- a testcase
3. test2.cl -- a testcase
4. test3.cl -- a testcase
5. test4.cl -- a testcase
6. source_files -- your implementation, including
   • main.rb or
   • main.py or
   • main.js or
   • main.hs or
   • main.ml

• team.txt -- an optional file listing your other team member (see below -- if you are not working in a team, do not include this file)

Working In Pairs

Students on a team are expected to participate equally in the effort and to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of the joint work. Both members bear full responsibility for the completion of assignments. Partners turn in one solution for each programming assignment; each member receives the same grade for the assignment. If a partnership is not going well, the teaching assistants will help to negotiate new partnerships. Teams may not be dissolved in the middle of an assignment.

If you are working in a team, exactly one team member should submit a PA6 zipfile. That submission should include the file team.txt, a one-line flat ASCII text file that contains exactly and only the email address of your teammate. Don't include the @virgnia.edu bit. Example: If ph4u and wrw6y are working together, ph4u would submit ph4u-pa5.zip with a team.txt file that contains the word wrw6y. Then ph4u and wrw6y will both receive the same grade for that submission.

Autograding

In each case we will then compare your output to the correct answer:

• diff testcase.out correct-answer.out

For error messages and negative testcases we will compare your output but not the particular error message. Basically, your generated code need only correctly identify that there is an error on line X. You do not have to faithfully duplicate our English error messages. Many people choose to (because it makes testing easier) — but it's not required.

We will perform the autograding on a 64-bit Linux system. However, your submissions must officialy be platform-independent (not that hard with a scripting language). You cannot depend on your compiler running on any particular platform (although you can depend on the resulting assembly code running on its associated platform).

There is more to your grade than autograder results. See the Programming Assignment page for a point breakdown.

Your submission may not create any temporary files. Your submission may not read or write any files beyond its input and output. We may test your submission in a special "jail" or "sandbox".