Quxlang

Progress status:

qxc is able to compile and link a hello world program for linux targets, but it's not nearly well-tested enough to be used for production yet. Also, there is no standard library yet, so you will have fun writing assembler for every system call you need.

Overview

Quxlang is a systems programming language. It's intended as an improvement over C++ for certain uses. It is still in active development but is not yet ready for people to use or try out. Please wait until a later date when there is a standard library and more codegen. For now, you can compile the quxlang_gtests and modify the main_test.qxs file if you want to experiment.

The compiler is mainly developed using clang and libc++. Compatibility with GCC tends to vary between commits. I try to make sure it compiles with GCC as well, but there can be a long stretch of commits before GCC compatibility is restored if I break it during development accidentally.

Dependencies:

Compilers:

• Clang
• GCC (Sometimes works)
• MSVC (Best effort, sometimes works)

Stdlib:

• libc++ (Recommended)
• libstdc++ (Sometimes works, I usually fix it every few weeks)

Build system:

• CMake (required)
• Ninja (recommended)

Other libraries

• YAMLCpp (Suggest using my fork at https://github.com/rnichollx/yaml-cpp, it can be made to compile with the official one but some CMake / CBuild integration doesn't work)
• GTest (For tests)
• Benchmark (For benchmarks; using my fork https://github.com/rnichollx/google-benchmark is suggested, although this mostly only matters if you want to use CBuild/CSetup)
• LLVM v22

If you follow quick setup guide below, CBuild/CSetup are also required, but it's just a wrapper around CMake, so you don't need it.

Quick Setup Guide

Install Go, libc++, and clang.

Then run the following commands to install CBuild/CSetup:

go install gitlab.com/rpnx/cbuild-go/cmd/cbuild@preview && \
go install gitlab.com/rpnx/cbuild-go/cmd/csetup@preview

After that is done, run the following commands inside this project to setup a workspace and build the project:

csetup dev-init && cd ./dev-workspace && cbuild

And/or run the following command to get arguments for the IDE of your choice:

csetup get-args  quxlang --config Debug --toolchain system-clang-libcxx 

(if you are on MacOS, replace system-clang-libcxx with system-clang)

(also toolchain detection doesn't work on windows yet, so you may have to provide your own toolchain file...)

cbuild test

Will build all targets and run tests.

cbuild build # or just `cbuild`

Will just build all targets.

Status

Currently, some layers are mostly working. If you run the quxlang_gtests func_gen test, the compiler should run several tests against the compiler API.

Known gaps and remaining work are tracked in docs/TODO.md.

What works or mostly works:

• Classes
• Constructors / destructors (mostly)
• Operator overloading
• Function calls
• Functions, references
• Instance pointers
• Integer ops (add/subtract, etc.)
• If statement, while statement
• Variable declarations
• Assignment statements
• CONST&, MUT&, TEMP& etc. references.
• Constexpr evaluation of expressions that result in bool
• Pointer arithmetic
• Array and wildcard pointers
• Using multiple modules together

Note regarding "Qux"

Quxlang is always the complete name, referred to as "Quxlang" (similar to how "lang" is part of the name of "Erlang"), never as "Qux" nor as "QuxLang". The "L" in Quxlang should never be capitalized (unless Quxlang is written using ALL CAPS). There is another project called "Qux" which is an archived programming language project; that is a different project entirely, and Quxlang is not related to that project aside from having a similar name.