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Darkmatter

A programming language from another universe.

Darkmatter is a fast & efficient general-purpose programming language simlar to Java/C/C#/Rust.

This is the Darkmatter compiler project, its goal is to output LLVM-IR assembly which then is assembled into a native platform/architecture-specific binary (executable/library) or output JVM byte-code.

NOTE: This is a volunteer-effort project. This means we work on this project when we have time. Large portions of the project may currently be missing or broken for the time-being until more progress is made!

[ Homepage / RFCs ]

build license

Table of Contents

Feature Roadmap

Compiler Parts

Darkmatter's compiler is segmented into 2-parts.

  • Front-End (lexer, parser, linter, AST)
    • Currently under discussion to be written in Rust or Java
    • Syntax Definitions & Structure
    • Parse compiler flags and arguments
    • Input Darkmatter (.dm)
    • Lexer / Parser / Tokenizer
    • AST
    • LLVM codegen() for AST
    • Optimize produced LLVM-IR (depending on optimization-level)
    • Output LLVM-IR (.ll)
  • Back-End (assemble IR) - Input IR / Output Native Binary or JVM byte-code
    • TBA
    • Input LLVM-IR (.ll)
    • Linker - https://lld.llvm.org/
    • Output Native Binary Static Library (.a, .lib)
    • Output Native Binary Dynamic Library (.so, .dll)
    • Output Native Binary Executable (.exec, .exe)
    • Output JVM byte-code (.class)

Syntax

The Darkmatter grammer and syntax requirements.

  • Unsigned primitives
  • Operator overloading
  • Scopes / Contexts
  • Functions (non-class) and Methods (class)
  • Structs
  • References ("String Literal" -> &string)
  • FFI

Compiler

flowchart LR;


%% Back End %%;

H(LLVM-IR):::blue --> |*.ll| I("
	Optimization
");

subgraph Darkmatter Compiler Back-end;
I --> J("
	LLVM-AS
	linker/assembler
");
end;

J--> |"*.{a,so,lib,dll,dylib}"| K["
	- Library -
	ELF,PE,MACH-O
	amd64,i386,arm64,armhf,mips
"]:::green;
J--> |"*.{,exe,exec}"| L["
	- Executable -
	ELF,PE,MACH-O
	amd64,i386,arm64,armhf,mips
"]:::red;





%% Front End %%;

A(Source Code):::cyan --> |*.dm| B("
	Tokenizer
	lexical analysis
"):::yellow;

subgraph Darkmatter Compiler Front-end;
	B --> |Tokens| C("
		Parser
		syntactic analysis
	");
	C --> D("
		AST
	");
	D --> E("
		Generator
	");
end;

E --> G("
	LLVM-IR
"):::blue;
E --> F["
	JVM byte-code
"]:::orange;





%% Styling %%;

classDef red stroke:#FF0000;
classDef green stroke:#00FF00;
classDef blue stroke:#0000FF;
classDef yellow stroke:#FFFF00;
classDef orange stroke:#FFAA00;
classDef cyan stroke:#00FFFF;
Loading
Currently considering RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization/Scope-Bound Resource Management) for memory management.
  • Output LLVM-IR assembly
    • Compile LLVM-IR to platform/architecture binary (supported ABI/ISAs):
      • Linux/amd64 (Intel/AMD 64-bit)
      • Linux/aarch64 (RISC ARMv8 64-bit)
      • Linux/mips64 (RISC MIPS III ISA VR4300 / R5900)
      • Linux/x86 (Intel/AMD 32-bit)
      • MacOS/amd64 (64-bit)
      • MacOS/aarch64 (RISC ARMv8 64-bit)
      • Windows/x86 (Intel/AMD 32-bit)
      • Windows/amd64 (RISC ARMv8 64-bit)
  • Output JVM byte-code
  • dmc - Compiler flags/options/args (ARGS* are the input Darkmatter source-files to compile)
    • -l, --log-level - Specify the logger level (TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR) (Default: INFO)
    • -j, --threads - Specify threads for compilation/transpilation
    • compile - Compile Darkmatter directly to a native binary (library/executable)
      • -o, --output - Output destination of the library/executable
      • -t, --target - Specify the target platform/architecture
      • -k, --library - Specify the library type (static/dynamic) (Default: static)
      • -A, --emit - Only emit LLVM-IR assembly, do not assemble.
      • -O, --optimize - Optimization level (0=no optimization, 2=aggressive optimization) (Default: 0)
    • generate - Compile Darkmatter to JVM byte-code
      • -o, --output - Output file destination
      • -b, --byte-code - The byte-code language to produce (jvm) (Default: jvm)

Examples:

## AoT Examples

# Compile `count_to_ten.dm` to a native executable binary named `count`
dmc compile --output count count_to_ten.dm
dmc compile -o count count_to_ten.dm

# Compile `count_to_ten.dm` to a native `linux/amd64` executable binary (ELF)
dmc compile --output count --target linux/amd64 count_to_ten.dm
dmc compile -o count -t linux/amd64 count_to_ten.dm


## JIT Examples

# Compile `my_class.dm` to a JVM byte-code class file
dmc generate --output MyClass.class --byte-code jvm my_class.dm
dmc generate -o MyClass.class my_class.dm

# Compile `a.dm` and `b.dm` to a JVM byte-code jar file
dmc generate --output MyApp.jar --byte-code jvm a.dm b.dm
dmc generate -o MyApp.jar a.dm b.dm

Standard Library

The Standard Library stdlib is the standard-API that all Darkmatter programs have access to which allows developers to access parts of a user's underlying system devices and resources.

  • core
    • system
      • Console
      • Process
    • types
      • scalar
      • boolean
      • char
      • reference (&string)
      • arrays
      • version (semver)
    • ffi
  • filesystem
  • network
  • graphics
    • OpenGL bindings
    • Vulkan bindings
  • audio

Package Manager

Currently the package-manager is planned to be built-in with the compiler.

All packages are downloaded to the local-project directory, no files are stored elsewhere.

  • Read project.toml.
  • Fetch project/lib by URL from Git (you must specify the URL).
  • Fetch project/lib by username/name:version from Darkmatter's site.
  • Fetch project/lib by username/name:version from DHT (P2P network).
  • CLI Args/flags
    • --pkg-init - Initialize the current directory as a project that can be packaged (creates project.toml if it does not exist, and adds .darkmatter-pkgs/ to .gitignore)
    • --pkg-info - Print info on the current local-project.
    • --pkg-update - Update all local-project dependencies.
    • --pkg-add - Add a local-project dependency by URL or username/name:version pair on Darkmatter's site or DHT network.
    • --pkg-remove - Remove a local-project dependency by its name:version.
  • Separate project
    • Rename? (partical-accel-erator or tesseract)
    • Source-code generator tess --generate gen-config.toml based on a JSON/markup-file.

Specification

  • Directly compiled language, no JIT.
  • Can output a static/shared library (.so/.dll/.dylib) or executable (ELF/PE/MACH-O).
  • Similar to Java/C# syntax.
  • RAII (no Garbage Collector)?

Compiler Logging

Logging Levels

The default logging levels are as follows:

  • TRACE Most verbose, all debug messages will be shown including internal process states.
  • DEBUG Verbose debugging messages will be shown, may contain sensitive information.
  • INFO Normal, only informational messages will be shown.
  • WARN Only warning messages will be shown along with errors.
  • ERROR Strictly only error messages will be shown.

Console Logging

Console logging is always enabled but can be limited to only showing certain messages tagged with specific severities such as WARN OR ERROR.

This is by-design.

File Logging

File logging can be enabled by either passing in a valid file path as to where logs will be stored, by setting the environment variable LOG_FILE to a valid path, or by configuring this via the Java API.

FAQ

Why Darkmatter?

Because it sounds cool :)

I invision Darkmatter as an alternative language syntactically-similar to Java/C# but while still allowing for fast low-level access.

Darkmatter is designed to be efficient, simple, clean, fast and platform-independent.

Some limitations of Java include:

  • JVM JIT-only compilation (inability to compile directly to a specific platform/architecture)
  • Lack of unsigned scalar types (uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64)
  • Lack of a non-painful FFI to other languages; Assembly, C, C++, etc.

Some limitations of C# include:

  • CLR/.NOT core is Windows-first support, other platforms are 3rd-class citizens.
  • A native binary created in Java by GraalVM native-image is still faster.
  • PascalCase is disgusting.

- anthonywww

What is Darkmatter's color palette?

Darkmatter adopts the color-palette cyan #00FFFF, dark-cyan #045454 and black #000000.

We would appreciate GitHub Linguist classifying Darkmatter as cyan #00FFFF.

How are variables defined?

All variables are statically-typed and immutable by default. You can declare a variable like so:

// Integers
int32 unsigned_number = 3;

// Strings
string message = "Hello, World!;

// For everything else:
var x = "something else";

Why is printing to the console weird?

If you are asking why we don't have System.out.println(), it's because of how the Standard Library (stdlib) is structured.

core (namespace)
\-- system (namespace)
    \-- Console (class)
	    \-- writeLine (method)

Console is the class that is responsible for I/O with the underlying terminal. Whereas writeLine() is a method that lets you print a message to the console which will also append a \n character to the end of your provided message.

We chose write instead of print because just like with other I/O operations, such as files or sockets, you are write()-ing or read()-ing to the device/buffer.

Available public methods to print in the Console class:

  • writeLine(...)
  • write(...)
  • writef(string format, ...)

If you really prefer printf() or println() over the methods above, discussion/proposals/suggestions are open on how these can be implemented without breaking convention/standards while keeping namespaces clean.

Why is the data-type string lower-case and not upper-case like Java?

Because in Darkmatter a string is a Primitive data-type and not an Object.

It should be noted, Primitives in Darkmatter may have functions attached to them.

What are Functions vs Methods?

As with other languages, a Method is basically just a member-function of a class in OOP.

Example:

// A function that adds 1 to an integer.
uint32 myFunction(uint32 x) {
	return x + 1;
}


public void MyClass {
	// A method that adds 1 to an integer.
	public uint32 myFunction(uint32 y) {
		return y + 1;
	}
}


int main(string[] args) {

	uint32 my_number = 3;

	// Function invocation
	uint32 function_result = myFunction(my_number);
	Console.writeLine(function_result); // 4

	// Method invocation
	MyClass my_class = new MyClass();
	uint32 method_result = my_class.myFunction(my_number);
	Console.writeLine(method_result); // 4

}

Getting Help

Are you having trouble with Darkmatter? We want to help!

Reporting Issues

Darkmatter uses GitHub’s integrated issue tracking system to record bugs and feature requests. If you want to raise an issue, please follow the recommendations below:

  • Before you log a bug, please search the issue tracker to see if someone has already reported the problem.
  • If the issue doesn’t already exist, create a new issue.
  • Please provide as much information as possible with the issue report. We like to know the Darkmatter version, operating system etc you’re using.
  • If you need to paste code or include a stack trace, use Markdown. ``` escapes before and after your text.
  • If possible, try to create a test case or project that replicates the problem and attach it to the issue.

Contributors

The following contributors have either helped to start this project, have contributed code, are actively maintaining it (including documentation), or in other ways being awesome contributors to this project. We'd like to take a moment to recognize them.

anthonywww mjovanc

License

The MIT License.

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The Darkmatter Programming Language Compiler

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