0.1.1

Release Changelog Complete Post - stas 0.1.1

Changelog

• Visual Studio Code support for stas with the stas-vscode extension. The extension is published at the open-vsx registry, download a copy there. If you are using vscodium, search for it in your extensions tab!
• Support for syntax highlighting in the Hugo static site generator, although you may need to wait for a new release from them (build it from source for the impatient).
• New addr keyword. Used to get addresses of variables declared with the auto keyword.
• Single character literals denoted with backticks. `A`, `\n`, `0`
• Unreachable code declared after the use of the ret keyword is now checked for and is a compiler error.
• Use the -r switch to execute the file after compilation, arguments after this switch will ignored and passed to the program.
• Scanner and token improvements, to make way for a rich error reporting system in a later release.
• Stack backtraces showing exactly what value was pushed onto the stack and where on a compiler error.
• Pretty printing of string literals in generated assembly.
• NASM backend, generates object files and annotated assembly with exported labels with the -g switch.
• Many improvements to codegen, generated code takes up a smaller footprint.
• --dump-tok and --dump-ir switches for dumping the compiler's inner data structures.
• Tail recursion optimisation.
• Code generation when inlining function bodies has been improved greatly.
• -v or --verbose enables verbose mode. Compiler passes will be timed and lots of information will be dumped.
• Negative numbers (about time). Signed comparision has been possible with <s, >s, <=s, >=s.
• Bugfix: stack checks on branches with early returns with the ret keyword are no longer implemented with a nasty hack.
• Bugfix: consecutive inline functions with branches no longer have their labels conflict.
• Bugfix: now waits for the backend to finish and handles it's exit code.
• Bugfix: now passes a proper argv[0] to child processes.

Note: It is not recommended that you build stas and experiment with it in this state. Executable paths are hard coded, this will be cleaned up in the 0.1.2 release.