Over the weekend there was some talk in IRC about why clojure-py didn't use Clojurescript as the basis for its compiler. The reasons I had, basically boiled down to this: Clojurescript is written in Clojure-JVM and as such requires that the JVM be installed, and also requires that all macros be Clojure-JVM and not ClojureScript. For Clojurescript this is fine. But for Clojure-Py this results in me writing a fair amount of "translated" code. Recently I've been thinking about how to change this.
Much of the more recent code in Clojure is very cross platform. Stuff like reducers can simply be copied over, fixed up a bit, and it runs. If we could ever get to the point where we write Clojure in Clojure, by default, then we could support the CLR, PVM, gambit, js, lua, etc. all with a single file edit. Over the weekend I've been thinking over how to make this all possible, and I think we're very close. The GSOC projects are working at making a plugable backend (code emmiters) for ClojureScript, so that part is being taken care of. All we really need now, is a cross-platform ClojureScript compiler in ClojureScript. From there, porting to a new platform would be simple: 1) generate a new backed as per the GSOC project 2) compile the ClojureScript compiler using the new backend 3) compile your code using "native" macros, etc. Platforms that do not have the ability to eval (gambit, JS, etc.) they could simply stick with writing Java macros. For the rest of the platforms (CLR, JVM, PVM, lua) they could then have native macros and be able to distribute only non-Java code. One of the original goals of Clojure-py was to be able to translate the entire compiler and runtime to RPython. However, to make this happen, certain things must be changed in the Python code. For instance, all primitives must be boxed. This means turning code like this: x = 1 + 2 into this: x = W_Add(Int(1), Int(2)) Under the current Clojure-py codebase this would be a bit hard to maintain. However, with Clojure-in-Clojure this is just a different backend. I see this all as being a major boon to anyone looking to port Clojure to a different platform. Hopefully at this point we could start looking at what it would take to port Clojure to LLVM and CUDA. Thoughts from the ClojureScript, clojure-gambit, GSOC people? Timothy Baldridge (halagri) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
