--- layout: site title: Crystal, a simple and minimal oo machine ---

Crystal layers

Map pretty much to top level directories.

Machine Code, bare metal

This is the code in arm directory. It creates binary code according to the arm specs. All about shifting bits in the right way.
As an abstraction it is not far away from assembler. I mapped the memnonics to function calls and the registers can be symbols or Values (from vm). But on the whole this is as low level as it gets.
Different types of instructions are implemented by different classes. To make machine dependant code possible, those classes are derived from Vm versions.
There is an intel directory which contains an expanded version of wilson, but it has yet to be made to fit into the architecture. So for now crystal produces arm code.

Parsing, forever descending

Parsing is relatively straightforward too. We all know ruby, so it's just a matter of getting the rules right.
If only. Ruby is full of niceties that actually make parsing it quite difficult. But at the moment that story hasn't even started.
Parslet lets us use modules for parts of the parser, so those files are pretty self-explanitory. Not all is done, but a good start.
Parslet also has a seperate Transformation pass, and that creates the AST. Those class names are also easy, so you can guess what an IfExpression represents.

Virtual Machine

The Virtual machine layer (vm) is where it gets interesting, but also more fuzzy.
Currently still quite simple, we have Classes for things we know, like program and function. Also things we need to create the code, like Blocks and Instructions.
The most interesting thing is maybe the idea of a Value. If you think of Variables, Values are what a variable may be assigned, but it may carry a storage place (register). Values are constant, and so to change a value, we have to create a new Value (of possibly different basic type). Thus all machine instructions are the trasformation of values into new ones.
Also interesting is the slightly unripe Basic Type system. We have a set of machine-word size types and do not tag them (like mri or BB), but keep type info seperate. These types include integer (signed/unsigned) object reference and function. Most of the oo machine will build on object references. To make that clearer: The (virtual)machine is strongly typed (with rtti) and the dynamic ruby behaviour it implemented using that basic type system.

The flux

This is just a section of things that are unclear, in flux as it were. This does not included undone things, those are plenty too.