#native-codegen

MEP-42 Linker and Runtime Recommendation

§1 Phase 1 recommendation Use LLD as the universal linker, with platform-aware overrides: ld.lld on Linux, the system ld (ld_prime) on macOS, lld-link on Windows. Bundle LLD inside the Mochi distribution (Apache 2 + LLVM exception license, one binary covers all four formats: ELF, Mach-O, PE, Wasm) so cross-host builds work from any developer machine. For the C runtime, use the host glibc on Linux (dynamic link, document the glibc-2.31...

Code Signing and Notarization

§1 Provenance Apple developer doc, "Notarizing macOS software before distribution": https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing-macos-software-before-distribution Apple Developer ID program: https://developer.apple.com/developer-id/ Microsoft Trusted Signing (formerly Azure Code Signing): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/trusted-signing/ Microsoft Authenticode Signing PE files: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/authenticode Moonbase, "Code signing audio plugins in 2025": https://moonbase.sh/articles/code-signing-audio-plugins-in-2025-a-round-up/ Reverse Society, "Complete Guide to Notarizing macOS Apps with notarytool": https://tonygo.tech/blog/2023/notarization-for-macos-app-with-notarytool §2 Mechanism / function Three OS-level gatekeeping systems shape what users see when they double-click a downloaded binary: macOS Gatekeeper checks...

MEP-42 Phase 1: Naive Backend Recommendation

§1 Provenance This is a synthesis document. Sources are the eight technique deep-dives in naive/01_*.md through naive/08_*.md and the six paper surveys in papers/01_*.md through papers/06_*.md . Project context: MEP-40 specification of vm3 + compiler3, the Cell/arena/three-bank-register-file design, and the project preference to stay pure-Go-no-cgo. §2 Recommendation Mochi MEP-42 phase 1 should ship a copy-and-patch JIT. Hand-write one C function per runtime/vm3/op.go opcode, compile each with Clang at build time,...

The Compile-Time vs Runtime Trade-Off

§1 Provenance The trade-off is folklore across the JIT community; quantified in many published papers and blog posts. Key data points: Sparkplug: ~10x faster compile than TurboFan, code ~5-10x slower at runtime. V8 blog https://v8.dev/blog/sparkplug . Liftoff: ~15-20x faster compile than TurboFan, code ~1.1-1.5x slower (Sightglass benchmarks). https://v8.dev/blog/liftoff . Copy-and-Patch: ~100x faster compile than LLVM, code ~2x slower at runtime. Xu/Kjolstad PLDI 2021, https://fredrikbk.com/publications/copy-and-patch.pdf . JSC tier ratios: DFG ~4x...

Static-PIE

§1 Provenance glibc design discussion (initial GCC patch by H.J. Lu): https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/patch/20170824200227.GA14790@gmail.com/ musl rcrt1 patch (Szabolcs Nagy, 2020): https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2020/04/27/2 Eklitzke, "The Curious Case of Position Independent Executables": https://eklitzke.org/position-independent-executables Gaultier, "Build PIE executables in Go: I got nerd-sniped": https://gaultier.github.io/blog/build-pie-executables-with-pie.html ASLR for statically linked binaries (Leviathan Security): https://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/aslr-protection-for-statically-linked-executables §2 Mechanism / function A traditional static executable has ELF type ET_EXEC and is hard-loaded at a fixed virtual address (historically 0x400000 on Linux...

Emitting Object Files Directly for Mochi

§1 Provenance gimli (DWARF read/write, Rust): https://github.com/gimli-rs/gimli , https://crates.io/crates/gimli , current 0.31.1. object (ELF/Mach-O/COFF read/write, Rust): https://github.com/gimli-rs/object . ddbug (DWARF visualization): https://github.com/gimli-rs/ddbug . Go's debug/elf, debug/macho, debug/pe : https://pkg.go.dev/debug/elf , https://pkg.go.dev/debug/macho , https://pkg.go.dev/debug/pe (read-only in standard library). Go's debug/dwarf : https://pkg.go.dev/debug/dwarf (read-only). golang-asm objabi relocations : https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/twitchyliquid64/golang-asm@v0.15.1/objabi llvm-objdump , llvm-readelf , llvm-objcopy : standard LLVM utilities for round-trip inspection. System V ABI ELF spec : https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/elf/elf.pdf Mach-O reference (Apple) :...

MEP-42 Backend Survey: Summary and Recommendation

§1 What is in this directory This directory contains a per-backend evaluation for MEP-42: 01_llvm.md LLVM 20.x 02_cranelift.md Cranelift (Wasmtime) 03_qbe.md QBE 04_mir.md MIR (Vladimir Makarov) 05_libgccjit.md libgccjit 06_copy_and_patch.md copy-and-patch (CPython JIT) 07_dynasm.md DynASM (LuaJIT) 08_golang_asm.md golang-asm (already used by Mochi vm2jit) 09_mlir.md MLIR 10_c_as_backend.md C as a backend (Nim, V style) 11_tcc_chibicc.md TCC, chibicc, Cuik (reference points) 12_wasmtime_aot.md Wasmtime AOT 13_emitting_object_files.md Direct object file emission 14_jit_libraries_survey.md AsmJit, Xbyak, Keystone,...

Apple Universal Binaries

§1 Provenance Apple developer doc, "Building a universal macOS binary": https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/building-a-universal-macos-binary WWDC 2020 introduction (transition keynote, session 102): https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/102/ Universal binary background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary lipo(1) man page: shipped with Xcode command-line tools (no canonical web URL; check man lipo on a Mac). The Future of Intel Macs (Eclectic Light, July 2025): https://eclecticlight.co/2025/07/04/whats-the-future-for-your-intel-mac/ §2 Mechanism / function A Mach-O "fat" or "universal" binary is a wrapper that contains multiple independent Mach-O images,...

AOT Compilation Case Studies: Summary for MEP-42

§1 Scope This summary distils the case studies in 01_*.md through 12_*.md : GraalVM Native Image, .NET NativeAOT, Zig self-hosted, Crystal, Nim, Hare, V, Julia/juliac, Mojo, GHC NCG, Swift / Embedded Swift, and Static Python / Cinder / CPython 3.13 JIT. Each file has its own provenance, architecture, target matrix, runtime, status, Mochi adaptation note, and open questions. This document looks only at the cross-cutting patterns. §2 Closed-world vs open-world...

Hostable JIT/AOT Library Survey for Mochi

§1 Provenance AsmJit : https://asmjit.com/ , https://github.com/asmjit Xbyak : https://github.com/herumi/xbyak Keystone : https://www.keystone-engine.org/ , https://github.com/keystone-engine/keystone (sibling of Capstone, https://www.capstone-engine.org/ ) Capstone : https://www.capstone-engine.org/ (disassembler, not codegen; relevant for round-trip testing) distorm3 : https://github.com/gdabah/distorm Iced (Rust/.NET) : https://github.com/icedland/iced Zydis : https://github.com/zyantific/zydis zasm : https://github.com/zyantific/zasm libgccjit : covered separately in 05_libgccjit.md . §2 Mechanism + §3 Target coverage + §4 Adoption + §5 Engineering cost (combined per library) AsmJit (C++, x86_64 /...

Source Maps and DWARF for WebAssembly

§1 Provenance Chrome DevTools Wasm DWARF doc: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/wasm/ Chrome blog (2020) "Improved WebAssembly debugging": https://developer.chrome.com/blog/wasm-debugging-2020 Chrome blog (2019) precursor: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/wasm-debugging-2019/ C/C++ DevTools Support extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cc++-devtools-support-dwa/pdcpmagijalfljmkmjngeonclgbbannb Source maps v3 spec: https://sourcemaps.info/spec.html DWARF in Wasm extension (originally a custom section external_debug_info and embedded .debug_* sections): tracked at https://github.com/WebAssembly/tool-conventions/blob/main/Debugging.md Node Wasm debugging tracker: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/37984 §2 Mechanism / function WebAssembly debugging has two formats in flight: Source maps (the older approach) were originally designed...

Compiler Textbooks Relevant to a Naive Mochi Backend (2022-2026)

§1 Provenance Cooper, Torczon, Engineering a Compiler , 3rd ed, Morgan Kaufmann, Nov 21 2022. ISBN 978-0-12-815412-0. Won the TAA Textbook Excellence Award 2024. Publisher page: https://shop.elsevier.com/books/engineering-a-compiler/cooper/978-0-12-815412-0 . ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128154120/engineering-a-compiler . Nystrom, Robert, Crafting Interpreters , Genever Benning, 2021. Free online: https://craftinginterpreters.com/ . Appel, Andrew W., Modern Compiler Implementation in ML (1998) / Java (2002) / C (1998). Cambridge UP. Long-running canonical textbook. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/ . Aho, Lam, Sethi, Ullman, Compilers:...

Targets Summary

§1 Status legend must-have : Phase 1 ships this combination. Mochi without it is not a credible product. should-have : Phase 1 or early Phase 2. A serious gap if missing. could-have : Phase 2 or later. Valuable to advanced users, not blocking. out-of-scope : not planned for any phase of MEP-42 (might be MEP-43+ or never). Engineering complexity is a rough 1 to 5 ordinal: 1 = a week...

Swift and Embedded Swift

§1 Provenance Project home: https://swift.org/ Source: https://github.com/swiftlang/swift Embedded Swift overview: https://www.swift.org/get-started/embedded/ "Get Started with Embedded Swift on ARM and RISC-V Microcontrollers": https://www.swift.org/blog/embedded-swift-examples/ WWDC24 session "Go small with Embedded Swift": https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10197/ Swift 6 announcement: https://www.swift.org/blog/announcing-swift-6/ Embedded Swift vision document (in-tree): https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/visions/embedded-swift.md Authors: Apple's Swift team, with Embedded Swift led by Kuba Mracek, Alex Lorenz, and the Cupertino compiler group. Lattner was the original Swift creator (now at Modular working on Mojo)....

Static Python, Cinder, and CPython's Copy-and-Patch JIT

§1 Provenance Cinder: https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder (Meta's CPython fork) CinderX (the extension form): https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinderx Static Python documentation in-repo: https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder/blob/cinder/3.8/CinderDoc/static_python.rst Meta's "Python 3.12 features" engineering blog (the hooks landing): https://engineering.fb.com/2023/10/05/developer-tools/python-312-meta-new-features/ CPython JIT PEP 744: https://peps.python.org/pep-0744/ Copy-and-patch paper: Xu and Kjolstad, "Copy-and-Patch Compilation" (OOPSLA 2021, https://fredrikbk.com/publications/copy-and-patch.pdf ) Authors: Cinder/Static Python by Meta's Instagram and Python infra teams (Carl Meyer, Itamar Ostricher, Dino Viehland, etc.); CPython 3.13 JIT by Brandt Bucher and Ken Jin building...

GHC NCG and the LLVM Backend Choice

§1 Provenance Project home: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ Source: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc Backends documentation: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.12.2/docs/users_guide/codegens.html 9.12.1 release blog: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20241216-ghc-9.12.1-released.html 9.12.2 release blog: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20250314-ghc-9.12.2-released.html 9.12.3-rc2 announcement (Nov 2025): https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20251111-ghc-9.12.3-rc2-released.html Well-Typed activity reports (the most consistent NCG status source): https://www.well-typed.com/blog/ Tweag's "Making GHC faster at emitting code": https://www.tweag.io/blog/2022-12-22-making-ghc-faster-at-emitting-code/ Foundational paper: Marlow et al., "Faster Laziness Using Dynamic Pointer Tagging" (ICFP 2007); the Cmm/STG split traces to the Spineless Tagless G-machine (Peyton Jones 1992). §2 Architecture GHC's pipeline...

PE/COFF

§1 Provenance Microsoft PE Format reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/pe-format . The .NET runtime maintains a more thorough PE/COFF spec: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/specs/PE-COFF.md . Windows x64 exception handling: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/exception-handling-x64 . Windows ARM64 exception handling: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/arm64-exception-handling . PDB / CodeView (partial Microsoft docs + the open-source reverse engineering): https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-pdb . DWARF (used by mingw): https://dwarfstd.org/doc/DWARF5.pdf . Authenticode specification: https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Authenticode_PE.docx . Go's debug/pe package: https://pkg.go.dev/debug/pe . §2 Mechanism / specification A PE file starts with an MS-DOS...

Mojo

§1 Provenance Project home: https://www.modular.com/mojo and https://mojolang.org/ Source (now public): https://github.com/modular/modular (the Mojo language tree) Documentation: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/ FAQ: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/ 1.0 beta announcement: https://forum.modular.com/t/modular-26-3-mojo-1-0-beta-mojolang-org-max-video-gen-and-more/3038 "Path to Mojo 1.0" blog post (5 Dec 2025): https://www.modular.com/blog/the-path-to-mojo-1-0 MLIR foundation paper: Lattner et al., "MLIR: Scaling Compiler Infrastructure for Domain Specific Computation" (CGO 2021). Authors: Chris Lattner (LLVM/Swift/MLIR creator), Tim Davis, and the Modular Inc. team. Founded 2022. §2 Architecture Mojo's compiler pipeline is an...

CodeView and PDB

§1 Provenance LLVM PDB format documentation: https://llvm.org/docs/PDB/index.html llvm-pdbutil reference: https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/llvm-pdbutil.html Reid Kleckner (Google), "CodeView, the MS debug info format, in LLVM" (2016): https://llvm.org/devmtg/2016-11/Slides/Kleckner-CodeViewInLLVM.pdf Microsoft cvinfo.h (CodeView record definitions): https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-pdb (the canonical reference dump from Microsoft, last published 2017, still authoritative) Format is owned by Microsoft and partially open. The "MS-PDB" specification was never formally published; the LLVM team reverse-engineered enough to produce a complete writer. §2 Mechanism / function Three...

ELF (Executable and Linkable Format)

§1 Provenance System V Application Binary Interface Generic ABI (the gABI): https://www.sco.com/developers/gabi/latest/contents.html . Linux man page elf(5): https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/elf.5.html . Original ELF specification (Tool Interface Standard, TIS Committee, 1995): https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/elf/elf.pdf . DWARF Debugging Information Format v5: https://dwarfstd.org/doc/DWARF5.pdf . GNU extensions reference: binutils source plus https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/binutils/ . GNU IFUNC documentation: https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/GNU_IFUNC . Go's debug/elf package: https://pkg.go.dev/debug/elf . §2 Mechanism / specification ELF has three flavors of file: relocatable object (.o), executable, and...

Mach-O

§1 Provenance Apple's loader.h header (canonical machine-readable spec): https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/xnu/blob/main/EXTERNAL_HEADERS/mach-o/loader.h . Apple's Mach-O reference documentation (legacy archive): https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/MachORuntime/ . Apple's TN3127 (Inside Code Signing: Requirements): https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3127-inside-code-signing-requirements . Apple's TN3151 (Choosing a tool chain): https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/ . Go's debug/macho package: https://pkg.go.dev/debug/macho . LLVM lld Mach-O backend source: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/main/lld/MachO . Apple's open-source releases: https://opensource.apple.com/ . §2 Mechanism / specification A Mach-O file starts with a mach_header_64 (32 bytes): magic: MH_MAGIC_64 (0xFEEDFACF). cputype, cpusubtype: x86_64...

APE (Actually Portable Executable) and Cosmopolitan Libc

§1 Provenance Cosmopolitan Libc source and docs: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan . APE specification: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/ape/specification.md . Cosmopolitan project page: https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/ . llamafile project: https://github.com/mozilla-ai/llamafile . redbean web server: https://redbean.dev/ . Cosmopolitan release notes: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/releases . ape-loader source (the 8 KB loader extracted at runtime on Linux): https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/tree/master/ape . The cosmocc toolchain releases: https://cosmo.zip/pub/cosmocc/ . §2 Mechanism / specification APE is a polyglot binary format invented by Justine Tunney. A single file simultaneously parses...

WebAssembly Module Binary Format

§1 Provenance WebAssembly Core Specification 3.0, Binary Format chapter: https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/binary/index.html . Component Model Binary Format: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/design/mvp/Binary.md . WAT (text format) reference: https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/text/index.html . Custom section conventions (name section, source maps): https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/main/BinaryEncoding.md#name-section . WASI Preview 2 worlds and interfaces: https://github.com/WebAssembly/WASI/tree/main/wasip2 . Wabt (WebAssembly Binary Toolkit): https://github.com/WebAssembly/wabt . Binaryen (optimizer and toolkit): https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen . §2 Mechanism / specification A Wasm module begins with an 8-byte preamble: magic 0x00 0x61 0x73 0x6D ("\0asm")...

Cranelift Internals: ISLE, Proof-Carrying Code, and the Portable Backend Story

§1 Provenance Cranelift project (Bytecode Alliance, lead Chris Fallin): https://cranelift.dev/ . Source: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/tree/main/cranelift . ISLE blog post (Chris Fallin, Jan 20 2023): "Cranelift's Instruction Selector DSL, ISLE: Term-Rewriting Made Practical", https://cfallin.org/blog/2023/01-20/cranelift-isle/ . "A New Backend for Cranelift, Part 1: Instruction Selection" (Chris Fallin, Sept 18 2020): https://cfallin.org/blog/2020/09/18/cranelift-isel-1/ . ISLE language reference: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/cranelift/isle/docs/language-reference.md . Bytecode Alliance 2023 retrospective: https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/wasmtime-and-cranelift-in-2023 . VeriISLE (Monica Pardeshi, CMU thesis 2023): http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2023/CMU-CS-23-126.pdf . VeriWasm (prior work...

DWARF 5 (and the DWARF 6 draft)

§1 Provenance Standards body: DWARF Standards Committee (independent since 2007), https://dwarfstd.org/ DWARF 5 spec (PDF): https://dwarfstd.org/doc/DWARF5.pdf DWARF 5 press release (Feb 2017): https://dwarfstd.org/dwarf5-press-release.html DWARF 6 working draft (May 2025 snapshot): https://snapshots.sourceware.org/dwarfstd/dwarf-spec/2025-05-05_22-29_1746484141/dwarf6-20250505-2228.pdf Errata: https://dwarfstd.org/dwarf5std.html Go reader: https://pkg.go.dev/debug/dwarf The committee includes representatives from Google, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, ARM, Sony, IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, and the LLVM and GCC projects. §2 Mechanism / function DWARF is a binary format for describing a...

C as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Nim's C backend: https://nim-lang.org/docs/backends.html Nim compiler user guide: https://nim-lang.org/docs/nimc.html Vlang (V): https://vlang.io/ ; the V compiler emits C by default. Hare uses QBE rather than C, so it is not an example here. Hare's c-cproc relative cproc is a C-to-QBE compiler. Cython: https://cython.org/ MicroPython's mpy-cross with C emission: https://github.com/micropython/micropython Classic reference: Cooper and Torczon, "Engineering a Compiler" (EaC), Chapters 7 and 8 cover C as a target. Earlier...

POPL 2024 and 2025: Compiler-Construction Papers

§1 Provenance POPL 2024: 51st ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, London, UK, Jan 17-19 2024. Proceedings in PACMPL vol 8, no POPL: https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2024/8/POPL . POPL 2025: 52nd edition, Denver, CO, USA, Jan 19-25 2025. Proceedings in PACMPL vol 9, no POPL: https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2025/9/POPL . Co-located: CPP 2024, CPP 2025 (Certified Programs and Proofs); PriSC 2024 (Principles of Secure Compilation). §2 Technique / contribution 1. PfComp: A Verified Compiler...

Wasmtime AOT as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://wasmtime.dev/ Source: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime AOT docs: https://docs.wasmtime.dev/examples-pre-compiling-wasm.html CLI options: https://docs.wasmtime.dev/cli-options.html WASI Preview 2 launched (vote January 25, 2024): https://eunomia.dev/blog/2025/02/16/wasi-and-the-webassembly-component-model-current-status/ Bytecode Alliance blog: https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/ Wasmtime v25 release: WASI 0.2.1, user stack maps, extended consts. Wasmtime v27 release: completed Wasm GC, PyTorch wasi-nn backend. Wasmtime v35 release: AArch64 support in Winch, plus Component Model and Custom Page Sizes (per https://bytecodealliance.org/articles) . §2 Mechanism You bring a Wasm module. wasmtime...

MLIR as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://mlir.llvm.org/ Source: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/main/mlir Users page: https://mlir.llvm.org/users/ Original paper: Chris Lattner et al., "MLIR: Scaling Compiler Infrastructure for Domain Specific Computation," CGO 2021. Mojo MLIR docs: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/notebooks/BoolMLIR/ Mojo vision: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/vision/ Awesome-MLIR/Mojo list: https://github.com/coderonion/awesome-mojo-max-mlir Mojo source-language Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_(programming_language) Mojo HPC paper (SC25 workshops): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.21039 §2 Mechanism MLIR is an IR framework rather than a single IR. It provides: A common SSA infrastructure (Operations, Regions, Blocks, Values, Types, Attributes)....

TCC, chibicc, Cuik as Reference Points for Mochi

§1 Provenance TCC (Tiny C Compiler): https://bellard.org/tcc/ , mob branch at https://repo.or.cz/tinycc.git , mirror https://github.com/TinyCC/tinycc . Originally by Fabrice Bellard (~2001); since ~2012 maintained by grischka with community contributions through November 2025. Last official release: 0.9.27 (December 2017); the mob branch is the active line. chibicc : https://github.com/rui314/chibicc by Rui Ueyama (also author of LLVM lld and 8cc). Educational reference compiler for a book in progress. 8cc : https://github.com/rui314/8cc ,...

MLIR Dialect Literature 2023-2026

§1 Provenance MLIR project: https://mlir.llvm.org/ . Originally Chris Lattner at Google (2018), released as part of LLVM in 2019. Wikipedia MLIR page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLIR_(software) . Triton (OpenAI): https://github.com/openai/triton . Recent paper "ML-Triton: A Multi-Level Compilation and Language Extension to GPU Programming" (2025), arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.14985 . IREE (Google): https://iree.dev/ , https://github.com/iree-org/iree . Mojo (Modular): https://docs.modular.com/mojo/ . Vision page: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/vision/ . KGEN compiler discussed at https://forum.modular.com/t/mlir-dialect-import-for-mojo/774 . Awesome list: https://github.com/coderonion/awesome-mojo-max-mlir . Ramalho et...

Freestanding / no-libc

§1 Provenance Linux syscall ABI man page: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/syscall.2.html Linux vDSO man page: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/vdso.7.html Darling docs on macOS syscalls: https://docs.darlinghq.org/internals/basics/system-call-emulation.html Cosmopolitan source (a real freestanding-style implementation): https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan Zig freestanding target docs: https://ziglang.org/learn/overview/#small-self-contained-builds "UNIX Syscalls" (John Millikin): https://john-millikin.com/unix-syscalls §2 Mechanism / function A "freestanding" or "no-libc" binary makes its own system calls directly to the kernel without going through any C library. The mechanism varies sharply per OS: Linux: stable syscall ABI....

PLDI 2024 and 2025: Relevant Code-Generation Papers

§1 Provenance PLDI 2024: 45th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 24-28 2024. Proceedings in PACMPL vol 8, no PLDI: https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2024/8/PLDI . PLDI 2025: 46th edition, Seoul, South Korea, June 16-20 2025. Proceedings in PACMPL vol 9, no PLDI: https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2025/9/PLDI . Conference pages: https://pldi24.sigplan.org/ and https://pldi25.sigplan.org/ . §2 Technique / contribution Summarized below are six papers from PLDI 2024-2025 most relevant to MEP-42's "naive...

QBE as a Naive-But-Good-Enough Backend

§1 Provenance Author: Quentin Carbonneaux (Yale), with contributions for arm64 and riscv64 by additional collaborators. Canonical site: https://c9x.me/compile/ . Source mirror: https://github.com/8l/qbe . License: MIT. FOSDEM 2022 introduction by Drew DeVault (SourceHut): https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/lg_qbe/attachments/slides/4878/ . Notes by Bill Mill: https://notes.billmill.org/programming/compilers/QBE.html . Go wrapper (cgo-free): modernc.org/libqbe ( https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/libqbe) , a port of QBE to Go. §2 Technique / contribution QBE's value proposition: take an SSA IR in a simple textual form, run...

Nim

§1 Provenance Project home: https://nim-lang.org/ Source: https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim Memory management reference: https://nim-lang.org/docs/mm.html 2.2.0 release announcement: https://nim-lang.org/blog/2024/10/02/nim-220-2010.html Roadmap RFC: https://github.com/nim-lang/RFCs/issues/556 Nimony (next-gen compiler): https://github.com/nim-lang/nimony NIFC dialect specification: https://github.com/nim-lang/nimony/blob/master/doc/nifc-spec.md Author: Andreas Rumpf (Araq). Project started 2008; Nim 1.0 in 2019, Nim 2.0 in Aug 2023. §2 Architecture The classical Nim pipeline (still the production pipeline as of 2.2.x in May 2026): Parser → AST. Sem pass performs type inference, generics instantiation, macro expansion...

V Language

§1 Provenance Project home: https://vlang.io/ Source: https://github.com/vlang/v FAQ: https://github.com/vlang/v/wiki/FAQ Memory management docs: https://docs.vlang.io/memory-management.html Native backend discussion: https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/13675 Architecture wiki (DeepWiki overview): https://deepwiki.com/vlang/v Author: Alexander Medvednikov (Medvednikov), Estonia. First public release 2019, MIT license, beta in May 2026. Notable as a 2025 entrant on the TIOBE index. §2 Architecture V's pipeline: Parser → AST. The parser is hand-written and pegs single-pass single-file parsing as the performance budget. Checker does name resolution...

Cosmopolitan Libc

§1 Provenance Project home: https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/ Source: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan "Third Edition" essay (Justine Tunney): https://justine.lol/cosmo3/ cosmocc README: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/tool/cosmocc/README.md Prebuilt apps: https://cosmo.zip/ Discussion: https://groups.google.com/g/cosmopolitan-libc License: ISC (a permissive 1-clause BSD variant). Author: Justine Tunney, with Mozilla MIECO sponsorship for 3.x. §2 Mechanism / function Cosmopolitan Libc produces a single binary, called an "Actually Portable Executable" (APE), that is simultaneously: A Linux ELF (you can ./prog on Linux and it runs). A FreeBSD...

Julia

§1 Provenance Project home: https://julialang.org/ Source: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia AOT devdocs: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/devdocs/aot/ PackageCompiler.jl: https://github.com/JuliaLang/PackageCompiler.jl , docs at https://julialang.github.io/PackageCompiler.jl/dev/ JuliaC.jl driver: https://github.com/JuliaLang/JuliaC.jl LWN coverage of the 1.12 binary-size work: https://lwn.net/Articles/1006117/ JuliaCon 2024 talk "New ways to compile Julia" by Jeff Bezanson and Gabriel Baraldi (slides linked from https://juliahub.com/blog/new-ways-to-compile-julia-blog) . Foundational paper: Bezanson, Edelman, Karpinski, Shah, "Julia: A Fresh Approach to Numerical Computing" (SIAM Review, 2017). §2 Architecture Julia's traditional pipeline is JIT-first: Parse...

Hare

§1 Provenance Project home: https://harelang.org/ Source: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare Specification: https://harelang.org/specification Announcement: https://harelang.org/blog/2022-04-25-announcing-hare/ Backend (QBE): https://c9x.me/compile/ (Quentin Carbonneaux's QBE compiler backend). Blog (active 2024–2025): https://harelang.org/blog/ Author: Drew DeVault and contributors (Sebastian, Pasta, spxtr, others). BDFL governance. §2 Architecture The Hare pipeline is one of the simplest in modern language design: Lexer/parser produce an AST. The type checker resolves a static, inferred type system with tagged unions and no generics. The compiler lowers...

The Go Runtime as a Library

§1 Provenance cgo package docs: https://pkg.go.dev/cmd/cgo runtime/cgo: https://pkg.go.dev/runtime/cgo and https://go.dev/src/runtime/cgo/ Build mode docs: https://pkg.go.dev/cmd/go#hdr-Build_modes Cgo cost analysis (Cockroach Labs): https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/the-cost-and-complexity-of-cgo/ Go 1.22 release notes: https://go.dev/doc/go1.22 License: BSD 3-clause (Go itself). Maintained by the Go team at Google plus a large community. §2 Mechanism / function Go supports three relevant cross-language build modes: -buildmode=c-archive produces a static library ( .a on Unix, .lib on Windows) that exposes Go-defined functions as C-callable...

libgccjit as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Documentation: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/jit/ Source: in the GCC tree, https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=tree;f=gcc/jit Author: David Malcolm (Red Hat), with steady contributions from a Red Hat compiler team. Initial paper: David Malcolm, "libgccjit: An embeddable code-generation library backed by GCC," GCC Cauldron 2014 (slides at https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/cauldron2014) . Emacs native compilation tracking: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Native_002dCompilation-Functions.html Andrea Corallo's gccemacs writeup: https://akrl.sdf.org/gccemacs.html §2 Mechanism libgccjit exposes a C API (with C++ and Python bindings) that lets callers build a...

Copy-and-Patch as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Original paper: Haoran Xu and Fredrik Kjolstad, "Copy-and-patch compilation: a fast compilation algorithm for high-level languages and bytecode," OOPSLA 2021 (PACMPL Vol. 5 Article 136). Note: the task brief said PLDI 2021; the paper is actually OOPSLA 2021. ACM: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485513 arXiv preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.13127 Author page (Fredrik Kjolstad): http://fredrikbk.com/copy-and-patch.html Stanford talk slides: https://aha.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj20066/files/media/file/aha_050621_xu_copy-and-patch.pdf Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-and-patch PEP 744 (Python JIT): https://peps.python.org/pep-0744/ LWN follow-up (2025): https://lwn.net/Articles/1029307/ Real Python writeup: https://realpython.com/python313-free-threading-jit/...

golang-asm as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Repository: https://github.com/twitchyliquid64/golang-asm Package docs: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/twitchyliquid64/golang-asm Latest tag: v0.15.1 (mirrors Go's cmd/internal/obj/* state at the corresponding upstream Go version). Upstream code lives in the official Go tree: https://go.googlesource.com/go/+/master/src/cmd/internal/obj/ Originally extracted by twitchyliquid64 (Tom Hennen) so that Wazero and similar Go-hosted projects could JIT Wasm without cgo. License: BSD-3-Clause (Go's license). §2 Mechanism The Go toolchain has its own assembler (Plan 9 lineage), used by cmd/asm and indirectly by cmd/compile...

chibicc: A Minimal C Compiler as a Mochi Backend Reference

§1 Provenance Author: Rui Ueyama (Google, prior author of 8cc and the current LLVM lld linker). Repository: https://github.com/rui314/chibicc . Companion book: "Compiler Book" (Japanese), https://www.sigbus.info/compilerbook (English translation pending). License: MIT. Status: feature-complete for most C11; ~11.6k GitHub stars, ~1k forks as of 2025. Self-hosting: chibicc compiles itself, plus real-world programs like Git, SQLite, and libpng with their test suites passing. §2 Technique / contribution The pipeline is the most readable...

glibc

§1 Provenance Project home: https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/ Git: https://sourceware.org/git/glibc.git Manual: https://sourceware.org/glibc/manual/ License: LGPLv2.1+ (with some headers under more permissive terms; some test files under GPL). Maintainers: a steering committee under the GNU project. Notable contributors include Florian Weimer (Red Hat), Adhemerval Zanella (Linaro), Carlos O'Donell (Red Hat), Siddhesh Poyarekar. §2 Mechanism / function glibc is the C library that ships with every mainstream Linux distribution that is not Alpine-shaped. It implements ISO...

DynASM as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://luajit.org/dynasm.html Features: https://luajit.org/dynasm_features.html Source in LuaJIT tree: https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/tree/v2.1/dynasm ARM64 module: https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/blob/v2.1/dynasm/dasm_arm64.lua Unofficial docs: https://corsix.github.io/dynasm-doc/ MoarVM fork: https://github.com/MoarVM/dynasm Author: Mike Pall (LuaJIT). Copyright 2005-2025 Mike Pall, MIT-licensed. Originally developed for LuaJIT 1, retained as a build-time tool for LuaJIT 2's hand-written interpreter. §2 Mechanism DynASM is a two-stage system: Preprocess time : a Lua script ( dynasm.lua ) reads a C source file with embedded | -prefixed...

The Per-Opcode Template JIT Pattern

§1 Provenance HotSpot Template Interpreter (Sun Microsystems, ~2002+): the urtext of this pattern. See "The Java HotSpot Performance Engine Architecture" ( https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/whitepaper.html) . Erlang BEAM (Ericsson, 1998+): the JIT in OTP 24+ (BeamAsm, https://www.erlang.org/blog/a-first-look-at-the-jit/ ) is template-style, written in C++ over asmjit. Lua/LuaJIT 2.x interpreter (Mike Pall): the interpreter is itself a hand-written assembler with one template per op. JIT is trace-based, but interpreter design is template. Sparkplug (V8, 2021),...

musl libc

§1 Provenance Project home: https://musl.libc.org/ Git: https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/ Wiki: https://wiki.musl-libc.org/ Release history: https://musl.libc.org/releases.html Author: Rich Felker (single principal maintainer since 2011). License: MIT (with a handful of files under various BSD-style and public-domain licenses; see the COPYRIGHT file). musl was started in 2011 with the explicit goal of providing a small, correct, MIT-licensed libc that is fully usable as a static library. It is the libc used by Alpine Linux (...

Other ISAs: PowerPC, MIPS, LoongArch, s390x, Apple GPU/Metal

§1 Provenance Power ISA v3.1 (and later) specification: https://openpowerfoundation.org/specifications/isa/ . 64-bit ELFv2 ABI Specification (ppc64le): https://openpowerfoundation.org/specifications/64bitelfv2abi/ . MIPS Architecture for Programmers documentation: https://www.mips.com/products/architectures/ (Imagination's MIPS pages; the canonical spec PDFs). LoongArch ELF psABI: https://github.com/loongson/la-abi-specs . LoongArch architecture reference: https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/ . z/Architecture Principles of Operation (IBM): https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/zarchitecture-principles-operation-spreadsheet (search for SA22-7832). ELF ABI for s390x: https://github.com/IBM/s390x-abi . Metal Shading Language specification (Apple): https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Shading-Language-Specification.pdf . §2 PowerPC / POWER POWER10 launched in 2021...

AArch64 Windows (Windows-on-ARM64)

§1 Provenance Microsoft ARM64 calling convention: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/arm64-windows-abi-conventions . ARM64EC ABI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/arm64ec-abi . Windows on ARM developer docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/ . PE/COFF spec: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/pe-format (the IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_ARM64 magic value is 0xAA64; ARM64EC is 0xA641). AAPCS64 base spec (Microsoft's ARM64 is a delta off this): https://github.com/ARM-software/abi-aa . Snapdragon X Elite developer kit reference: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/development/snapdragon-developer-kits/snapdragon-dev-kit-for-windows . §2 Mechanism / specification The Microsoft ARM64 ABI is based on AAPCS64 with these deltas: Variadic functions: all floats...

WebAssembly

§1 Provenance WebAssembly Core Specification 3.0: https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/ (W3C release September 2025). Wasm 3.0 release announcement: https://webassembly.org/news/2025-09-17-wasm-3.0/ . Feature status tracker: https://webassembly.org/features/ . Component Model spec: https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model . WASI roadmap: https://wasi.dev/roadmap . WASI Preview 2 standard: https://github.com/WebAssembly/WASI/tree/main/wasip2 . Wasmtime documentation: https://docs.wasmtime.dev/ . WAMR (WebAssembly Micro Runtime): https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime . §2 Mechanism / specification Wasm is a stack-based virtual ISA with structured control flow (no arbitrary jumps; blocks, loops, ifs, branches). The binary...

RISC-V RV64GC

§1 Provenance RISC-V Unprivileged ISA Manual: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-isa-manual (the canonical Volume I). RISC-V Privileged ISA Manual: same repo, Volume II. RISC-V psABI (ELF): https://github.com/riscv-non-isa/riscv-elf-psabi-doc . RISC-V Vector ISA (V 1.0): https://github.com/riscv/riscv-v-spec . RISC-V Profiles (RVA20, RVA22, RVA23): https://github.com/riscv/riscv-profiles . RISC-V Ratified Extensions list: https://riscv.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HOME/pages/16154732/Ratified+Extensions . Linux kernel arch/riscv documentation: https://docs.kernel.org/arch/riscv/ . §2 Mechanism / specification RV64GC = RV64I (base 64-bit integer) + M (multiply/divide) + A (atomics) + F (single-precision FP)...

Wasm Baseline Compilers: Liftoff, RabaldrMonkey, Winch

§1 Provenance V8 Liftoff (Clemens Backes et al.), 2018+. V8 blog: https://v8.dev/blog/liftoff . Source: https://chromium.googlesource.com/v8/v8/+/refs/heads/master/src/wasm/baseline/liftoff-compiler.cc . SpiderMonkey RabaldrMonkey (a.k.a. sm-base, Lars T. Hansen et al.), 2017+. Source in mozilla-central js/src/wasm/WasmBaselineCompile.cpp . Wasmtime Winch (Bytecode Alliance, lead by Saul Cabrera at Shopify and Chris Fallin), 2023+. RFC: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/rfcs/blob/main/accepted/wasmtime-baseline-compilation.md . README: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/winch/README.md . Comparative study: Ben L. Titzer, "Whose Baseline Compiler Is It Anyway?" CGO 2024, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444855 , arXiv https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13241 . §2...

Copy-and-Patch Compilation

§1 Provenance Authors: Haoran Xu and Fredrik Kjolstad (Stanford University). Venue: PLDI 2021, "Copy-and-Patch Compilation: A fast compilation algorithm for high-level languages and bytecode." Canonical PDF: https://fredrikbk.com/publications/copy-and-patch.pdf . ACM DOI: 10.1145/3485513. Production deployment: CPython 3.13 JIT (Brandt Bucher, Sept-Oct 2024). PEP 744: https://peps.python.org/pep-0744/ . Python 3.13 release notes: https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.13.html . LWN article "Adding a JIT compiler to CPython" ( https://lwn.net/Articles/977855/) . Author's homepage and lab page: https://fredrikbk.com/ , https://kjolstad.io/ ....

.NET NativeAOT

§1 Provenance Official overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/deploying/native-aot/ ASP.NET Core integration: https://learn.microsoft.com/aspnet/core/fundamentals/native-aot Source: the runtime/ILC compiler lives in https://github.com/dotnet/runtime under src/coreclr/tools/aot/ . Lineage: CoreRT (research project, 2014–2020, archived at https://github.com/dotnet/corert ) was renamed and rebooted as NativeAOT, shipped GA in .NET 7 (Nov 2022), expanded in .NET 8 (Nov 2023), .NET 9 (Nov 2024), and .NET 10 (Nov 2025). Authors: the .NET runtime team at Microsoft (Jan Kotas, Michal Strehovský, et al.). Key...

Zig Self-Hosted Compiler

§1 Provenance Project home: https://ziglang.org/ Source: https://github.com/ziglang/zig Devlog (primary status source): https://ziglang.org/devlog/2025/ Self-hosted milestone post by Loris Cro: https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-self-hosted-now-what/ Self-hosted x86_64 default-in-debug announcement: https://ziggit.dev/t/self-hosted-x86-backend-is-now-default-in-debug-mode/10447 Mitchell Hashimoto on real-world build-time wins in 0.15.1: https://mitchellh.com/writing/zig-builds-getting-faster Lead author: Andrew Kelley, with a substantial contributor community (Jakub Konka on linkers, Matthew Lugg on incremental, etc.). BDFL governance via the Zig Software Foundation. §2 Architecture The Zig compiler pipeline is: Tokenizer and parser produce a...

GraalVM Native Image

§1 Provenance Project home: https://www.graalvm.org/ (Native Image reference manual at https://www.graalvm.org/latest/reference-manual/native-image/) . Source repository: https://github.com/oracle/graal (the Native Image / SubstrateVM tree lives at https://github.com/oracle/graal/tree/master/substratevm) . Foundational paper: Wuerthinger et al., "Initialize Once, Start Fast: Application Initialization at Build Time" (OOPSLA 2019). Earlier "One VM to Rule Them All" (Onward! 2013) describes the Truffle/Graal partial-evaluation pipeline that became the rest of GraalVM. Release calendar: https://www.graalvm.org/release-calendar/ . Current line in May 2026...

Skipping the Linker Entirely

§1 Provenance Go internal linker: https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/cmd/link Zig self-hosted backends: https://ziglang.org/devlog/2025/ Zig linker source layout: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/tree/master/src/link LLD as a library API: lld::elf::link() , lld::macho::link() , lld::coff::link() , lld::wasm::link() at https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/main/lld/include/lld/Common "Mostly statically linked" Go binary mechanism (debug/elf, debug/macho, debug/pe writers in the standard library): https://pkg.go.dev/debug/elf Authors are language toolchain authors: the Go team (Russ Cox, Cherry Mui, Than McIntosh on linker), the Zig team (Andrew Kelley, Jakub Konka), and the Wild...

Classical Single-Pass Code Generation

§1 Provenance Aho, Sethi, Ullman, "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools" (the Dragon Book), 1st ed 1986, 2nd ed (Aho, Lam, Sethi, Ullman) 2006. ISBN 0-321-48681-1. Cooper, Torczon, "Engineering a Compiler," 3rd ed, Morgan Kaufmann, Nov 2022 (ISBN 978-0-12-815412-0). Won the TAA Textbook Excellence Award in 2024. Publisher page: https://shop.elsevier.com/books/engineering-a-compiler/cooper/978-0-12-815412-0 . ScienceDirect TOC: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128154120/engineering-a-compiler . Muchnick, "Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation," 1997 (still cited). Wirth, "Compiler Construction" (free PDF from ETH)....

Crystal

§1 Provenance Project home: https://crystal-lang.org/ Source: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal Release blog: https://crystal-lang.org/blog/ (1.15.0 in Jan 2025, 1.16.0 in Apr 2025, 1.17.0 in Jul 2025, 1.18.0 in Oct 2025). Reference manual: https://crystal-lang.org/reference/ Author: Ary Borenszweig, Juan Wajnerman, Brian Cardiff at Manas Technology Solutions. Community-led since 2021 with 84codes sponsoring multi-threading work. Wikipedia overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_(programming_language) §2 Architecture Crystal is a whole-program AOT compiler. The pipeline: Parser builds an AST. Semantic phases run macro expansion,...

LLVM as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://llvm.org/ Source: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project Release notes (current trunk): https://llvm.org/docs/ReleaseNotes.html LLVM 20.1.0 tagged March 10, 2025 (Fedora tracking: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/LLVM-20 ) LLVM 20.X milestone tracker: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/milestone/26 Original paper: Chris Lattner and Vikram Adve, "LLVM: A Compilation Framework for Lifelong Program Analysis and Transformation," CGO 2004. Go bindings (community): https://github.com/tinygo-org/go-llvm Pure-Go IR builder (no cgo): https://github.com/llir/llvm §2 Mechanism LLVM consumes a typed, SSA, three-address intermediate representation (LLVM IR) and lowers...

Apple's New Linker (ld_prime / ld_new)

§1 Provenance Apple toolchain (closed source for the new linker). The older ld64 is at https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/ld64 but Apple has not released source for ld_prime / ld_new (confirmed by community probing of opensource.apple.com, see https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/749558) . WWDC 2023 session that introduced the new linker: "Meet mergeable libraries" (session 10268, https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10268/) . Community write-ups: Wade Tregaskis's ld_prime series at https://wadetregaskis.com/tags/ld_prime/ . "The new linker in Xcode 15" talk by Yuta Saito (kateinoigakukun):...

Cranelift as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://cranelift.dev/ Source: in the Wasmtime monorepo, https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/tree/main/cranelift ISLE language reference: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/cranelift/isle/docs/language-reference.md 2022 roadmap RFC (most recent formal): https://github.com/bytecodealliance/rfcs/blob/main/accepted/cranelift-roadmap-2022.md ISLE RFC: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/rfcs/blob/main/accepted/cranelift-isel-isle-peepmatic.md E-graph midend RFC: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/rfcs/blob/main/accepted/cranelift-egraph.md Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranelift "Cranelift Progress in 2022": https://bytecodealliance.org/articles/cranelift-progress-2022 Bjorn3 progress reports (cg_clif): https://bjorn3.github.io/ §2 Mechanism Cranelift consumes CLIF, a target-independent SSA IR with block parameters (no phi nodes) and explicit memory operations. The pipeline is: legalization, an optional e-graph-based midend (constant...

GNU ld (bfd) and gold

§1 Provenance GNU binutils home: https://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/ Source and ChangeLog: https://sourceware.org/git/binutils-gdb.git Binutils 2.44 release announcement (February 2025): https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2025-02/msg00001.html gold Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_(linker) License: GPLv3 (with binary GPLv2-compatible link exemption for certain libraries). Maintainer: Nick Clifton (Red Hat) leads binutils. gold was originally Ian Lance Taylor's project at Google. §2 Mechanism / function Two distinct linkers ship in the GNU binutils family: ld.bfd is the classical GNU linker. It is built on...

QBE as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Project home: https://c9x.me/compile/ Source: https://c9x.me/git/qbe.git (mirror: https://github.com/8l/qbe ) Releases page: https://c9x.me/compile/release/ (current stable: qbe-1.2.tar.xz) Lobsters thread for QBE 1.0: https://lobste.rs/s/yqakzf/qbe_1_0 Mailing list: ~ mpu/qbe@lists.sr.ht (subscribe via sourcehut) Personal branch with extra patches: https://git.sr.ht/~mcf/qbe NLnet ARM32 grant (2025-10 start): https://nlnet.nl/project/QBE-32-bit-ARM-support/ Author: Quentin Carbonneaux (assistant professor at Yale, prior PhD work at Yale on cost-bounded program analysis). §1.5 Self-description (from project home) "QBE aims to provide 70% of the performance...

MIR as a Code-Generation Backend for Mochi

§1 Provenance Source: https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir Author blog: https://vnmakarov.github.io/ Releases: https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir/releases IR specification: https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir/blob/master/MIR.md C frontend (c2m): https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir/tree/master/c2mir Generator API: https://github.com/vnmakarov/mir/blob/master/mir-gen.h Author: Vladimir Makarov (formerly Red Hat, longtime GCC register allocator maintainer and RA designer of "IRA" in GCC). Project was originally a Ruby JIT experiment (the "Ruby MJIT replacement" discussion thread on the ruby-dev list), now a general-purpose backend. §2 Mechanism MIR is a "Medium Internal Representation": typed, three-address, but not...

x86_64 System V AMD64 ABI

§1 Provenance Canonical specifications: Official psABI (community maintained): https://gitlab.com/x86-psABIs/x86-64-ABI (the LaTeX source and PDF builds live here, currently revision 1.0+, with continuous incremental amendments tracked in git). Historical baseline PDF (v0.99): https://refspecs.linuxbase.org/elf/x86_64-abi-0.99.pdf . Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual (Intel SDM), Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/intel-sdm.html . AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual, Vols 1 to 5: https://www.amd.com/en/search/documentation/hub.html?keyword=AMD64+Architecture+Programmer%27s+Manual . Intel APX Architecture Specification: https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/784266/355828-intel-apx-spec.pdf (revised through 2025). Apple's notes...

mold: The Modern Linker

§1 Provenance Project home and source: https://github.com/rui314/mold Author: Rui Ueyama (also the original author of LLD). Commercial vehicle: Blue Whale Systems PTE LTD (Tokyo / Singapore). License: MIT (since mold 2.0, October 2023). The earlier AGPL plus commercial dual-license was retired (see https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mold-2.0-Linker) . Slides and design background: https://easybuild.io/tech-talks/006_mold_slides.pdf §2 Mechanism / function mold is an ELF-only linker that targets the same role as ld.bfd , ld.gold , and ld.lld...

x86_64 Windows (Microsoft x64) ABI

§1 Provenance Microsoft x64 calling convention reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/x64-calling-convention . x64 stack usage and prolog/epilog: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/stack-usage and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/prolog-and-epilog . x64 exception handling: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/exception-handling-x64 . PE/COFF spec (the file-format counterpart): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/pe-format . Intel SDM and AMD64 Programmer's Manual (same as SysV). PDB / CodeView reference: Microsoft's docs are partial; the de-facto reference is the LLVM llvm-pdbutil and microsoft-pdb GitHub repo at https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-pdb . §2 Mechanism / specification Integer/pointer arguments: RCX, RDX, R8,...

Sparkplug: V8's Non-Optimizing Baseline JavaScript Compiler

§1 Provenance Designer: Leszek Swirski (V8 team, Google). Released: V8 v9.1, May 2021. Primary source: V8 blog post "Sparkplug, a non-optimizing JavaScript compiler" ( https://v8.dev/blog/sparkplug) . Source code: V8 source tree under src/baseline/ ( https://chromium.googlesource.com/v8/v8/) . Related research framing: Ben L. Titzer, "Whose Baseline Compiler Is It Anyway?" CGO 2024 ( https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO57630.2024.10444855) , arXiv preprint https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.13241 . Lineage references: V8 Full-Codegen (2008+, retired around v5.9 in 2017) and Crankshaft (also...

AArch64 AAPCS64

§1 Provenance AAPCS64 canonical text: https://github.com/ARM-software/abi-aa/blob/main/aapcs64/aapcs64.rst (and the published PDF at https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ihi0055/latest/) . ARM Architecture Reference Manual for A-profile (Arm ARM): https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0487/latest/ . ELF for the Arm 64-bit architecture (AAELF64): https://github.com/ARM-software/abi-aa/blob/main/aaelf64/aaelf64.rst . Apple ARM64 documented deviations: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/writing-arm64-code-for-apple-platforms . Microsoft ARM64 calling convention: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/arm64-windows-abi-conventions . Apple ARM64e (PAC) overview: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/preparing-your-app-to-work-with-pointer-authentication . §2 Mechanism / specification Integer/pointer arguments: X0 to X7. Floating-point/SIMD arguments: V0 to V7 (V is the 128-bit vector view;...

JavaScriptCore Baseline JIT

§1 Provenance Project: JavaScriptCore (JSC), the JavaScript engine in Apple WebKit/Safari. Architect-of-record: Filip Pizlo (Apple), with contributions from Gavin Barraclough, Geoffrey Garen, Saam Barati, and others. Origin: ~2008 (the "SquirrelFish Extreme" / "Nitro" announcement), continuously evolved since. Authoritative writeups: Filip Pizlo, "Speculation in JavaScriptCore" ( https://webkit.org/blog/10308/speculation-in-javascriptcore/) , 2020. Pizlo DLS/VMIL 2017 slides, "The JavaScriptCore Virtual Machine" ( http://www.filpizlo.com/slides/pizlo-dls2017-vmil2017-jscvm-slides.pdf) . Saelo (Samuel Gross), "JavaScriptCore Internals Part II: The LLInt and Baseline...

Native Code Emission

Background research for Mochi MEP-42 : the native-codegen positioning that pairs a copy-and-patch JIT (Xu+Kjolstad PLDI 2021, validated by CPython 3.13 in October 2024) for mochi run hot loops with a C-as-target AOT pipeline (Nim / V / Vala lineage) for mochi build distributables. Each subsection drills into one thread of the 2024-2026 native-codegen landscape. Every file has a §1 Provenance with canonical URLs, a §2 Mechanism, a §3 status...

LLD: The LLVM Linker

§1 Provenance Project home: https://lld.llvm.org/ Source tree: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/tree/main/lld Release notes (20.1.0): https://releases.llvm.org/20.1.0/tools/lld/docs/ReleaseNotes.html License: Apache 2.0 with LLVM exception (SPDX Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception ). Lead maintainers (ELF port): Fangrui Song (MaskRay), Igor Kudrin, Peter Smith. The COFF port is led by Martin Storsjo and Reid Kleckner. Apple, Sony, ARM, Google, and the broader LLVM community all contribute. LLD ships as part of the LLVM monorepo and inherits LLVM's release cadence (approximately...

AOT Compilation Case Studies

Linkers

Code Generation Backends

Debug Info Formats

Runtime and libc

Object Formats

Naive Emission Techniques

Recent Papers and Surveys

Target ISAs and ABIs