The old model for imports was to use top-level declarations on the
enclosing module itself. This was a laudible attempt to simplify
matters, but just doesn't work.
For one, the order of initialization doesn't precisely correspond
to the imports as they appear in the source code. This could incur
some weird module initialization problems that lead to differing
behavior between a language and its Coconut variant.
But more pressing as we work on CocoPy support, it doesn't give
us an opportunity to dynamically bind names in a correct way. For
example, "import aws" now needs to actually translate into a variable
declaration and assignment of sorts. Furthermore, that variable name
should be visible in the environment block in which it occurs.
This change switches imports to act like statements. For the most
part this doesn't change much compared to the old model. The common
pattern of declaring imports at the top of a file will translate to
the imports happening at the top of the module's initializer. This
has the effect of initializing the transitive closure just as it
happened previously. But it enables alternative models, like imports
inside of functions, and -- per the above -- dynamic name binding.
One guiding principle for what makes it into the MuIL AST is that
the gap between source language and AST should not be too great; the
projection of switch statements from MuJS into MuIL clearly violated
that principle, particularly considering that the logic wasn't even
right due to the incorrect emulation of conditional breaks.
Instead of digging deeper into the hole, I've encoded switch logic
in the AST, and implemented support in the evaluator.
This change further merges the new AST and MuPack/MuIL formats and
abstractions into the core of the compiler. A good amount of the old
code is gone now; I decided against ripping it all out in one fell
swoop so that I can methodically check that we are preserving all
relevant decisions and/or functionality we had in the old model.
The changes are too numerous to outline in this commit message,
however, here are the noteworthy ones:
* Split up the notion of symbols and tokens, resulting in:
- pkg/symbols for true compiler symbols (bound nodes)
- pkg/tokens for name-based tokens, identifiers, constants
* Several packages move underneath pkg/compiler:
- pkg/ast becomes pkg/compiler/ast
- pkg/errors becomes pkg/compiler/errors
- pkg/symbols becomes pkg/compiler/symbols
* pkg/ast/... becomes pkg/compiler/legacy/ast/...
* pkg/pack/ast becomes pkg/compiler/ast.
* pkg/options goes away, merged back into pkg/compiler.
* All binding functionality moves underneath a dedicated
package, pkg/compiler/binder. The legacy.go file contains
cruft that will eventually go away, while the other files
represent a halfway point between new and old, but are
expected to stay roughly in the current shape.
* All parsing functionality is moved underneath a new
pkg/compiler/metadata namespace, and we adopt new terminology
"metadata reading" since real parsing happens in the MetaMu
compilers. Hence, Parser has become metadata.Reader.
* In general phases of the compiler no longer share access to
the actual compiler.Compiler object. Instead, shared state is
moved to the core.Context object underneath pkg/compiler/core.
* Dependency resolution during binding has been rewritten to
the new model, including stashing bound package symbols in the
context object, and detecting import cycles.
* Compiler construction does not take a workspace object. Instead,
creation of a workspace is entirely hidden inside of the compiler's
constructor logic.
* There are three Compile* functions on the Compiler interface, to
support different styles of invoking compilation: Compile() auto-
detects a Mu package, based on the workspace; CompilePath(string)
loads the target as a Mu package and compiles it, regardless of
the workspace settings; and, CompilePackage(*pack.Package) will
compile a pre-loaded package AST, again regardless of workspace.
* Delete the _fe, _sema, and parsetree phases. They are no longer
relevant and the functionality is largely subsumed by the above.
...and so very much more. I'm surprised I ever got this to compile again!
This is the first change of many to merge the MuPack/MuIL formats
into the heart of the "compiler".
In fact, the entire meaning of the compiler has changed, from
something that took metadata and produced CloudFormation, into
something that takes MuPack/MuIL as input, and produces a MuGL
graph as output. Although this process is distinctly different,
there are several aspects we can reuse, like workspace management,
dependency resolution, and some amount of name binding and symbol
resolution, just as a few examples.
An overview of the compilation process is available as a comment
inside of the compiler.Compile function, although it is currently
unimplemented.
The relationship between Workspace and Compiler has been semi-
inverted, such that all Compiler instances require a Workspace
object. This is more natural anyway and moves some of the detection
logic "outside" of the Compiler. Similarly, Options has moved to
a top-level package, so that Workspace and Compiler may share
access to it without causing package import cycles.
Finally, all that templating crap is gone. This alone is cause
for mass celebration!
