Ikarus Scheme is a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...

optimizing

incremental compiler An incremental compiler is a kind of incremental computation applied to the field of compilation. Quite naturally, whereas ordinary compilers make a so-called clean build, that is, (re)build all program modules, an incremental compiler recompiles ...

for

R6RS Scheme is a dialect of the Lisp family of programming languages. Scheme was created during the 1970s at the MIT AI Lab and released by its developers, Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman, via a series of memos now known as the Lambda Papers. ...

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

that compiles directly to the x86

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation of ...

architecture. Ikarus is the first public implementation of a large part of the R6RS Scheme standard. Version 0.0.3 has 94% of the total R6RS forms and procedures. Development stopped in 2008.

Design

The

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

developer, Abdulaziz Ghuloum, was a Ph.D. student at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. * Indiana Univers ...

under

R. Kent Dybvig R. Kent Dybvig is a professor emeritus of computer science at Indiana University Bloomington, in Bloomington, Indiana. His research focuses on programming languages, and he is the principal developer of the optimizing Chez Scheme compiler and runti ...

, the developer of

Chez Scheme Chez Scheme is a programming language, a dialect and implementation of the language Scheme which is a type of Lisp. It uses an incremental native-code compiler to produce native binary files for the x86 ( IA-32, x86-64), PowerPC, and SPAR ...

, who has influenced the development of Ikarus. Some of the ideas behind the design of Ikarus Scheme are detailed in "An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction" by the developer. Ikarus is self-hosting with most of the compiler and primitives written in Scheme and only a few parts of the

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists both in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile t ...

written in C. Also, rather than using an external

intermediate language An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good" ...

like C,

LLVM LLVM is a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a front end for any programming language and a back end for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent intermediate repre ...

, or

C-- C-- (pronounced ''C minus minus'') is a C (programming language), C-like programming language. Its creators, functional programming researchers Simon Peyton Jones and Norman Ramsey, designed it to be generated mainly by compilers for very high-l ...

, it compiles directly to

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ver ...

to better exploit the underlying machine architecture. Ikarus uses the ''portable R6RS library and syntax-case system'' which is also developed by Abdulaziz Ghuloum and is described in a paper, "Implicit phasing for R6RS libraries". Finally, the paper "Generation-Friendly Eq Hash Tables" covers the hash table implementation in Ikarus.

System requirements

Ikarus runs on x86 but requires

SSE2 SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) is one of the Intel SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) processor supplementary instruction sets first introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2000. It extends the earlier SSE ins ...

support to handle

floating-point arithmetic In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...

(FP) computations so it will not produce code for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

chips earlier than

Pentium 4 Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. The production of Netburst processors was active from 2000 ...

or for

Advanced Micro Devices Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufa ...

(AMD) chips before

Athlon 64 The Athlon 64 is a ninth-generation, AMD64-architecture microprocessor produced by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), released on September 23, 2003. It is the third processor to bear the name '' Athlon'', and the immediate successor to the Athlon ...

. Release 0.0.3 has been tested and runs on: *

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, version 10.4 and 10.5 *

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

, 2.6.18; Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, and Ubuntu *

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

, version 6.2 *

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

, version 3.1 *

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

, using Cygwin 1.5.24

References

External links

*
Ikarus Scheme development siteR6RS library and syntax-case system development siteIkarus Scheme User's GuideThe R6RS Standard
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ikarus (Scheme Implementation) Scheme (programming language) implementations Scheme (programming language) compilers Free compilers and interpreters R6RS Scheme