Amsterdam Compiler Kit

Amsterdam Compiler Kit
Developer(s)	Andrew Tanenbaum, Ceriel Jacobs;; Currently: David Given
Initial release	early 1980s
Stable release	6.0pre5 / June 2, 2016; 8 years ago
Repository	github.com/davidgiven/ack ;
Written in	C
Operating system	Minix, Unix-like
Type	Retargetable compiler
License	BSD licenses
Website	tack.sourceforge.net

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) is a retargetable compiler suite and toolchain written by Andrew Tanenbaum and Ceriel Jacobs, since 2005 maintained by David Given.^[1] It has frontends for the following programming languages: C, Pascal, Modula-2, Occam, and BASIC.

History

The ACK's notability stems from the fact that in the early 1980s it was one of the first portable compilation systems designed to support multiple source languages and target platforms.^[2]^[3]

The ACK was known as MINIX's native compiler toolchain until the MINIX userland was largely replaced by that of NetBSD (MINIX 3.2.0) and Clang was adopted as the system compiler.

It was originally closed-source software (that allowed binaries to be distributed for MINIX as a special case), but in April 2003 it was released under the BSD licenses.

Working principle

Maximum portability is achieved by using an intermediate language using bytecode, called EM. Each language front-end produces EM object files, which are then processed through several generic optimisers before being translated by a back-end into native machine code.

ACK comes with a generic linker and librarian capable of manipulating files in the ACK's own a.out-based format; it will work on files containing EM code as well as native machine code. However, EM code cannot be linked to native machine code without translating the EM binary first.

Target processors

ACK backends can produce native machine code for a wide range of CPUs, even starting with small 8 bit CPUs.

6502
65C124 - used for the first software controlled implantable defibrrillator, the target was unique in that the C/EM code word size was 1 byte for an int and 2 bytes for a long.
6800 (assembler only)
6805 (assembler only)
6809 (assembler only)
ARM
8080^*
Z80
Z8000
Intel 8086^*
i386
68000
68020
68040
NS32016
S2650 (assembler only)
SPARC
VAX4
PDP-11
Broadcom VideoCore IV (BCM2708)*

^* Version 6.0

References

^ "The Amsterdam Compiler Kit". 2005. Time line on official website.
^ Tanenbaum, Andrew S; van Staveren, H.; Keizer, E.G.; Stevenson, J.W. (1983). "A Practical Tool Kit For Making Portable Compilers". Communications of the ACM. 26 (9): 654–660. doi:10.1145/358172.358182. hdl:1871/2605. S2CID 1217657.
^ A.V. Aho, R. Sethi & J.D. Ullman (1986). Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools ("The Dragon Book"). Addison-Wesley. p. 511. ISBN 0-201-10088-6.

External links

Official website
Official sourcecode repository, including changelog (GitHub)

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[1] "The Amsterdam Compiler Kit". 2005. Time line on official website.

[2] Tanenbaum, Andrew S; van Staveren, H.; Keizer, E.G.; Stevenson, J.W. (1983). "A Practical Tool Kit For Making Portable Compilers". Communications of the ACM. 26 (9): 654–660. doi:10.1145/358172.358182. hdl:1871/2605. S2CID 1217657.

[3] A.V. Aho, R. Sethi & J.D. Ullman (1986). Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools ("The Dragon Book"). Addison-Wesley. p. 511. ISBN 0-201-10088-6.

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