[swift-dev] Optionals in swift-clang

[Seth Friedman]

Thanks Jordan!

Here's a specific flow I'm interested in understanding. Note that this is
just a wild example that would help me better understand parts of the
compiler I'm interested in rather than any sort of proposal for the
language.

Let's say I have a type called SuperInt that has some cool integer
operations that would be applicable and useful to everyone writing Swift.
It's a given that this makes sense to be in the Swift language, and people
are going to be using it so often that it makes sense to create a new
literal syntax for this type. I'd like users to be able to instantiate a
SuperInt with the following:

let superIntExample = %^100^%

Crazy syntax for a crazy example, but I wanted to make sure it's not
something that's already in Swift. In this example, my SuperInt would be
instantiated with a value of 100.

I'd like to know the parts of the Swift compiler I would need to understand
and change to implement this new type with its new syntax.

I really this question requires a lengthy answer, but I think it would make
a great start to a Swift internals manual (which I agree with you would be
a fantastic idea).

Anyone's help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Seth
On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 5:25 PM Jordan Rose <jordan_rose at apple.com> wrote:

> Hi, Seth. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner! I don't think we have
> anything exactly like this, but there's *sort* of a sequence diagram in
> Chris and Joe's talk at the LLVM conference, "Swift's High-Level IR
> <https://youtu.be/Ntj8ab-5cvE>". I'd say it looks something like this:
>
> 1. Parsing
> 2. Semantic analysis, including type-checking
> 3. SIL generation
> 4. Mandatory SIL passes
> 5. SIL optimization
> 6. LLVM IR generation
> 7. LLVM optimization
> 8. LLVM output (usually including machine code generation and writing to a
> .o file)
>
> …with the last two handled pretty much completely by LLVM
> <http://llvm.org> itself, and not customized by Swift.
>
> We probably ought to have something like Clang's "Internals
> <http://clang.llvm.org/docs/InternalsManual.html>" manual (hopefully
> better), which lays out the major concepts in each library. As it is we
> have various concepts that are documented very well, either in docs/ or in
> header comments, and others which are just arcane knowledge in the heads of
> the implementers. This is not a good thing.
>
> The "Contributing <https://swift.org/contributing/>" page on the website
> lists a handful of ways to get involved; another one we're still bringing
> up is issues with the "StarterBug" label in JIRA. These are intended to be
> bugs that a newcomer could use as a goal-oriented way to learn about one
> part of the project.
>
> Of course, we're happy to answer any specific questions you might have
> (and this list is probably the right place for them). It's the general ones
> that are hard. :-)
>
> Jordan
>
> On Dec 16, 2015, at 2:36, Seth Friedman <sethfri at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Jordan!
>
> Another question if anyone has some time: I'm really interested in
> contributing to the project, but given that I don't have a ton of
> experience with compilers, I'm having a really hard time following the flow
> of the program. I understand that the high level flow is lexing, parsing,
> sema, and building the AST. However, tracing through the actual functions
> in the compiler prove much more difficult due to the amount of
> indirection/metaprogramming.
>
> Are there any sort of sequence diagrams that I haven't found yet? If
> anyone could let me know of any good resources you know of, that would be
> great. I'm sure this would also be of use to people in my boat that want to
> help but don't know how to start.
>
> Thanks,
> Seth
>
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:04 PM Jordan Rose <jordan_rose at apple.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi, Seth. I think you're getting Clang / swift-clang mixed up with swiftc
>> / swift. Clang is not the Swift compiler; the Swift compiler lives in the
>> "swift" repo. Swift depends on Clang for its interoperation with C and
>> Objective-C.
>>
>> A *lot* of the compiler encodes information about Optional, but most of
>> it stems from ASTContext.h and ASTContext.cpp, which has dedicated
>> entrypoints for getting Optional, Optional.None, and Optional.Some.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Jordan
>>
>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 17:59 , Seth Friedman via swift-dev <
>> swift-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> In Optional.swift in the stdlib, there's a comment that says "The
>> compiler has special knowledge of Optional<Wrapped>, including the fact
>> that it is an enum with cases named 'None' and 'Some'."
>>
>> What I'm trying to understand is: If I wanted to implement the optional
>> type from scratch, what would be the process I would go through? I've
>> scoured the swift-clang project and can't seem to find any reference to
>> optionals or even Swift explicitly. I discovered nullability attributes and
>> am hypothesizing that an expression of something like "Type?" is somehow
>> mapped to an attribute, but I'm really just stumbling around in the dark.
>>
>> In terms of what I've tried, I've gone through a lot of the source in the
>> swift-clang lib/Basic and lib/AST directories, and I've read through the
>> "Clang CFE Internals Manual" on the Clang website.
>>
>> Help is much appreciated!
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Seth
>>
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>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-dev
>>
>>
>>
>
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