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https://github.com/titzer/virgil

A fast and lightweight native programming language
https://github.com/titzer/virgil

compiler garbage-collection native programming-language system-programming systems webassembly

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A fast and lightweight native programming language

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README 

        
# virgil: A Fast and Lightweight Systems Programming Language



```

def main() {

    System.puts("Virgil is fast and lightweight!\n");

}

```



Virgil is a programming language designed for building lightweight high-performance systems.

Its design blends functional and object-oriented programming paradigms for expressiveness and performance.

Virgil's compiler produces optimized, standalone native executables, WebAssembly modules, or JARs for the JVM.

For quick turnaround in testing and debugging, programs can also be run directly on a built-in interpreter.

It is well-suited to writing small and fast programs with little or no dependencies, which makes

it ideal for the lowest level of software systems.

On native targets, it includes features that allow building systems that talk directly to

kernels, dynamically generate machine code, implement garbage collection, etc.

It is currently being used for virtual machine and programming language

research, in particular the development of a next-generation WebAssembly virtual

machine, [Wizard](https://github.com/titzer/wizard-engine).



This repository includes the entire compiler, runtime system, some libraries,

tests, documentation and supporting code for Virgil's various compilation

targets.



## Language Design



Virgil focuses on balancing these main features in a statically-typed language:



  * Classes - for basic object-oriented programming

  * Functions - for small-scale reuse of functionality

  * Tuples - for efficient aggregation and uniform treatment of multi-argument functions

  * Type parameters - for powerful and clean abstraction over types

  * Algebraic data types - for easy building and matching of data structures



For more, read [this paper](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/41446.pdf).

Or see the [tutorial](doc/tutorial/Overview.md).

Or read up on [libraries](doc/tutorial/LibUtil.md).



## Supported Targets



Virgil can compile to native binaries for Linux or Darwin, to jar files for the

JVM, or to WebAssembly modules. Linux binaries can run successfully under

Windows using Window's Linux system call layer.

The compiler is naturally a cross-compiler, able to compile from any supported

platform to any other supported platform, so you need only be able to run on

one of these platforms in order to target any of the others.



* x86-darwin : 32-bit Darwin kernels (MacOS)

* x86-64-darwin : 64-bit Darwin kernels (MacOS)

* x86-linux : 32-bit Linux kernels

* x86-64-linux : 64-bit Linux kernels

* jar : JAR files for the Java Virtual Machine

* wasm : WebAssembly module for any Wasm engine



## Implementation



Virgil is fully self-hosted: its entire compiler and runtime system is

implemented in Virgil.

It was originally designed as a language for embedded systems, particularly

microcontrollers, but now supports more mainstream targets.

The compiler includes sophisticated whole-program optimizations that achieve

great performance and small binaries.

Native binaries compiled from your programs can be as small as a few hundred

bytes in size and consume just kilobytes of memory at runtime.

You can learn more in the [Implementation Guide](doc/impl/README.md).



## Documentation



The most up-to-date documentation is, as always, this repository!

Learn how to [get started](start/README.md) using Virgil and browse the [tutorial](doc/tutorial/Overview.md), where many [example](doc/tutorial/examples) programs exist.



### Research Papers



Six research papers have been published on Virgil.



* Bradley Wei Jie Teo and Ben L. Titzer. [Unboxing Virgil ADTs for Fun and Profit](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3694848.3694857). In Proceedings of the Workshop Dedicated to Jens Palsberg on Occasion of of His 60th Birthday (JENSFEST 24). Pasadena, CA. October 2024.



* Ben L. Titzer. [Harmonizing Classes, Functions, Tuples and Type Parameters in Virgil III](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2491956.2491962) \[[pdf](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/sv//pubs/archive/41446.pdf)\]. In

Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

(PLDI '13). San Diego, CA. June 2013.



* Stephen Kou and Jens Palsberg. [From OO to FPGA: Fitting round objects into square hardware](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1869459.1869470)? \[[pdf](https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/paper/oopsla10.pdf)\] In

Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and

Applications (OOPSLA '10). Reno, Nevada, 2010.



* Ben L. Titzer and Jens Palsberg. Vertical Object Layout and Compression for Fixed Heaps. In

Semantics and Algebra Specification. Pp. 376-408. 2009.



* Ben L. Titzer and Jens Palsberg. [Vertical Object Layout and Compression for Fixed Heaps](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1289881.1289914) \[[pdf](https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/paper/cases07.pdf)\]. In

Proceedings of the International Conference on Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for

Embedded Systems (CASES ’07). Salzburg, Austria. October 2007.



* Ben L. Titzer. [Virgil: Objects on the Head of a Pin](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1167473.1167489) \[[pdf](https://escholarship.org/content/qt13r0q4fc/qt13r0q4fc.pdf)\]. In Proceedings of the 21 st Annual

Conference on Object-Oriented Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA '06). October 2006.



## License



Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. ([rt/LICENSE](rt/LICENSE) or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)