The design of a framework for compilers development

DOLPHIN framework is a solution conceived to support the development of modular compilers. Its supplies a large set of components, like: front-end’s, back-end’s, code analysis, code optimizations and measure components that can be combined to build new compilers. All these components work over a single form of intermediate code representation, the DOLPHIN Internal code Representation. The main principle that guides the conception of DOLPHIN framework was to build a user-friendly solution to develop high quality compilers. Such solution was achieved based on three main concepts: components, components reuse and data consistency. This paper, that aims to present the architectural design of DOLPHIN framework, demonstrates: how the concepts presented above influence the framework architecture; how they were ”implemented” on the framework, namely shows the interfaces defined for the components and for the code representation; how the components are related; how to use the components to implement concrete compilers; and how to evolve the components and the framework to support new features.

VIVO