Please note that the description of the course work may be updated from time to time to add clarifications or fix mistakes. Your are highly encouraged to "watch" this repository for any changes.
- Part 1 (parser), Friday 5 February 2021 at 5pm, weight = 20%
- Part 2 (ast builder + semantic analyser), Friday 26 February 2021 at 5pm, weight = 20%
- Part 3 (code generator), Friday 19 March 2021, at 5pm, weight = 25%
- Part 4 (register allocator), Wednesday 14 April 2021, at 5pm, weight = 25%
Specific instructions for each part can be found above by clicking on the part name.
As a reminder, this project is conducted individually. Cheating is a serious offense and all suspected cases will be reported to the faculty. We will run a plagiarism detection software that will check your code for similarities with submissions from other students form this year, and past years!
This software is able to identify similarities at a structural level. Adding whitespaces, renaming variables or moving pieces of code around will not defeat the detection software. So please refrain from the temptation of copying code from other sources; all the code in your repository should be written by you, and you alone.
Finally, you are also responsible for making sure that your code is not shared with anyone else (even after you are done with this course). If similar code is found between two (or more) students, we will not try to figure out who copied on who and will report all students involved.
We automatically run a series of test programs using your compiler about twice a day. You can keep track of your progress and see how many tests pass/fail using the scoreboard. The scoreboard is provided as a best effort service, do not rely on it as it may come down unexpectedly:no guarantees are offered.
If you use CS department lab machines, all the software requires to develop your compiler should be already installed. If you wish to develop using your own machine, you will need to ensure that you have the following software installed. Just note that we officially only offer support for Linux, and in particular Ubuntu, the system installed on the CS lab machines. However, we will do our best to help you out in case you encounter any trouble setting your machine, via the ED discussion forum.
Note that if you are using Linux (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, ...), the software should be directly available from your distribution package manager and you don't need to manually install it.
You can test if you already have Java development kit installed by typing:
javac -version
If this returns a version equals to, or higher than 11, then you are good to go. Otherwise, follow the link below for instructions on how to install manually the JDK 11 (feel free to install any newer version if you wish to):
In this course, we will use Apache Ant as the build system. Again, if you are using a CS lab machine, this software should already be installed. If you are using your machine, you can test if the software is there by typing:
ant -version
Any recent-enough (i.e. less than 5 years old) version should do. In case Ant is not installed on your system, you can install it manually following these instructions:
To test if git is already installed on your machine, type:
git --version
If this is not the case, you can follow this link with instructions on how to install git:
The marking will be done using an automated test suite on a Linux machine using Java 11.
Please note that you are not allowed to modify the Main.java file which is the main entry point to the compiler.
The Main.java will be replaced by our own when we run the automarker.
Also make sure that the build script provided remains unchanged so that your project can be built on our machine.
Furthermore, the use of any external libraries is forbidden.
In case of doubt, ask us on the online forum.
For all parts of the coursework, the marking will be a function of the number of successful tests as shown in the scoreboard and a series of hidden tests.
2/3 (66.6%) of the mark will be determined by the scoreboard tests and 1/3 (33.3%) will be determined by the hidden tests. You will get 1 point for each passing test and -1 for each failing test (only for the lexer, parser and semantic analysis components). Then, the mark is calculated by dividing the number of points achieved by the number of tests. The hidden tests are marked independently from the visible ones.
Although we do not mark you on the tests you will create for testing your own compiler, we do ask you to add all the tests you used into the tests folder of your repository.
If we find students that do not have any tests (or very few), and they managed to pass most of our tests, this will raise suspicion that this might be a case of academic misconduct.
Also make sure that you do not share your tests as they should be written by yourself alone (we will run plagiarism detection software on all the code, including the tests, that are in your repository).
You can choose to use any development environment for your project, such as IntelliJ, Eclipse, Emacs, Vim or your favourite text editor. Choose whichever you are confident with. However, we highly recommend using IntelliJ Idea since you will benefit from features such as the debugger, and the project is already setup to be used with IntelliJ.
IntelliJ is available on the CS lab machines. To launch it on the CS machines, open a terminal and simply type:
idea
If you wish to install IntelliJ on your own machine, you can download the latest copy of the free community edition here:
- Community edition of IntelliJ.
To import the project with IntelliJ, after it opens select "Import Project" and select the root directory of your project. On the following screen, ensure that the "Create project from existing sources" option is selected. You will then be presented with a series of screens. Just keep selecting "Next" without modifying any options. If you are asked whether to overwrite an existing .iml file, select the overwrite option.
To confirm that the project is setup correctly, you can try to run the Main.java file directly from the idea. To do so, right click the Main file in the src directory. In the context menu, select the "Run Main.main()" option. The program should now have run successfully
In order to build the project you must have Ant installed, which is installed already on the CS lab machines.
Your local copy of the repository contains an Ant build file (build.xml).
Please do not modify this file as our automatic marker will replace it with our own.
You can build the project from the commandline by typing:
$ ant build
This command outputs your compiler in a directory called bin within the project structure.
Thereafter, you can run your compiler from the commandline by typing:
$ java -cp bin Main
The parameter cp instructs the Java Runtime to include the local directory bin when it looks for class files.
It is important to ensure that you can compile and run your compiler from the command line since this is how the auto-marker will performed its task.
You can find a series of tests in the tests folder.
To run the lexer on one of them, you can type:
$ java -cp bin Main -lexer tests/fibonacci.c dummy.out
Which should produce the following output:
Lexing error: unrecognised character (#) at 1:0
INVALID
Lexing error: unrecognised character (i) at 1:1
INVALID
Lexing error: unrecognised character (n) at 1:2
INVALID
Lexing error: unrecognised character (c) at 1:3
INVALID
...
Lexing error: unrecognised character (}) at 34:2
INVALID
Lexing error: unrecognised character (}) at 35:0
INVALID
Lexing: failed (331 errors)
You can clean the bin directory by typing:
$ ant clean
This command effectively deletes the bin directory.
Since we are using an automated marking mechnism (based on how many progams can run successfully through your compiler), it is important to understand how git works. If you want to benefit from the nightly automatic marking feedback, please ensure that you push all your changes daily onto your GitLab centralised repository.
We suggest you follow the excelent tutorial from atlassian on how to use git. In particular you will need to understand the following basic meachnisms: