GNU lightning is a free software library that generates assembly language

Assembly language

An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...

 code at run-time. Supported backends are SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

 (32-bit), x86 (32- and 64-bit) and PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 (32-bit). An ARM port is under way.

Advantages Over Other Libraries

The features GNU lightning provides make it useful for just-in-time compiler applications. As opposed to libraries such as LLVM or libJIT, it only provides a low-level interface that assembles a standardized RISC architecture loosely based on the SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

 and MIPS

MIPS architecture

MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...

 into the target architecture's machine language.

Disadvantages

It does not provide register allocation, data-flow, and control-flow analysis, or optimization.

Projects that use GNU Lightning

Racket, GNU Smalltalk

GNU Smalltalk

GNU Smalltalk is an implementation of the Smalltalk programming language by the GNU Project.The implementation, unlike other Smalltalk environments, uses text files for program input and interprets the contents as Smalltalk code...

, and CLISP

CLISP

In computing, CLISP is an implementation of the programming language Common Lisp originally developed by Bruno Haible and Michael Stoll for the Atari ST...

 make use of GNU lightning for just-in-time compilation

Just-in-time compilation

In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation...

.

External links

• Using and porting GNU lightning