37 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
37 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
CMU Gwydion project's implementation of the Dylan programming language.
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Dylan is an object-oriented language with many powerful features, including
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automatic memory management (garbage collection), generic functions (also
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known as multiple dispatch or multi-methods), multiple inheritance, a
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powerful and safe macro facility for extending the language's syntax, and a
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powerful class and function library. Though it is a DYnamic LANguage, it
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includes facilities for making compiled programs more efficient than many
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other dynamic languages.
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The Dylan language was originally developed by Apple, but the project
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was dropped just as the language definition was being finished and
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before a production-quality compiler was complete. The Gwydion
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project and Harlequin have continued use and development of the
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language.
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Gwydion Dylan actually contains two implementations of the language.
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One, called Mindy (Mindy Is Not Dylan Yet), is a bytecode compiler and
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interpreter that implements most of the language except for the macro
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facility. The other, d2c, is a compiler for the full language that
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uses C as its target "assembly language". The d2c compiler was
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written in Dylan and bootstrapped using Mindy.
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A copy of the d2c compiler binary is required by the port to
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bootstrap the entire system. As the Gwydion documentation says,
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Recompiling the entire system takes over an hour on 64meg 200mhz
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Pentium Pro running Windows/NT. This is almost all for the
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compilation of the d2c runtime and compiler; compiling just Mindy
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takes only a few minutes. d2c also uses lots of memory, especially
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when compiling itself: you want at least 48 meg, and more is
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better.
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For more information about Gwydion Dylan, see the Gwydion Dylan maintainers
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WWW: http://www.gwydiondylan.org/
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-Peter S. Housel- housel@acm.org
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