Introduction

This is an introduction to using LLVM and the inkwell crate to write a JIT compiled calculator in Rust.

Roadmap

By the end of this endeavour we want to have a command-line calculator which can

  • Do all the basic arithmetic operations (5 * (7+8))
  • Have access to a bunch of pre-defined constants (2 * PI / 3)
  • Call mathematical functions from the C math library (sin(2*PI/3) calls the sin() function from libm)
  • Create our own variables (angle = 3 * PI / 4)

If there is time we might even try to define our own functions. It'd also be pretty cool to compile the code as a shared library (*.so or DLL) so it can be linked into other programs.

To do this, our calculator will need to run several phases

  • Parse the input into its AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) representation
  • Use inkwell to turn this AST into a LLVM Module (a single unit of compilation in LLVM) and define a top level calc_main() function
  • JIT compile this Module
  • Call the calc_main (possibly passing in arguments) and print out the result

For simplicity of implementation, the only data type our language will know about is the double (a 64-bit floating point number).