build system proposal

[alex-s168]

I want the build system to be extremely extensible, and also work for LM unrelated projects.

Important features that I want integrated:

• there should be a LM library / project hub, from which the projects are downloaded
• if the project is already installed locally, then it doesn't download from there!!
• the LM compiler itself, and related plugins should be libraries / projects too
• documentation generation for LM can just be a LM AST consumer plugin

projects provide tasks which are kinda like functions. Functions also take in settings and information about the project, like description and others.
For example:

• LM stdlib has lm-std::lib() -> lm::AST and lm-std::docs() -> lm-doc::Docs (it just provides the AST and docs of the lib)
• LSTS frontend has: lm-lsts::parse(File) -> lm::AST
• LM frontend has: lm-lm::parse(File) -> lm::AST
• C frontend has: lm-c::parse(File) -> lm::AST
• LM documentation generator has: lm-doc::gen(lm::AST) -> lm-doc::Docs, lm-doc::parse-md(File): lm-doc::Docs, lm-doc::combine(Vector<lm-doc::Docs>), lm-doc::render2md(lm-doc::Docs) -> File, and lm-doc::render2html(lm-doc::Docs) -> File
• the core LM compiler has lm::combine(Vector<lm::AST>) -> lm::AST, lm::compile(lm::AST) -> lm::Compiled
• C backend has: lm-emitc::emit(lm::Compiled) -> File
• cc has: cc::c2o(File) -> File
• LM vxcc backend has: lm-vxcc::emit(lm::Compiled) -> vxcc::IR
• vxcc backend has: vxcc::ir2ir(vxcc::IR) -> vxcc::IR, vxcc::ir2asm(vxcc::IR) -> File, and vxc::ir2o(vxcc::IR) -> File
• binutils has: bin::ar(Vector<File>) -> File, bin::link2exe(Vector<File>) -> File, bin::link2shared(Vector<File>) -> File
• lm-backend unifies all the LM backends that generate object files: lm-backend::compile(lm::Compiled) -> File
• lm-publish allows you to easily publish your project to either the project hub and / or to the local repository: lm-publish::publish()
• glob: glob::glob(String) -> Vector<File>

then when you are building a project like a JSON parser, you can do this in your project file:

let project = Project {
  name: "json",
  version: "1.0.0",
  author: "name <email>"
  description: "Parse JSON to LSTS SerialVal",
  depends: [
    "glob",
    "lm-std",
    "lm", "lm-lsts", "lm-doc", "lm-publish"
  ]
};

let src(): Vector<File> = (
  glob::glob("src/*.lsts")
);

let lib(): lm::AST = (
  lm::combine(lm-std::lib(), src().map(lm-lsts::parse))
);

let docs(): lm-doc::Docs = (
  lm-doc::combine([
    lm-doc::parse-md(glob::glob("docs/*.md")),
    lm-doc::gen(lib())
  ])
);

# publish all exposed functions (`src`, `lib`, and `docs`)
lm-publish::publish();

still left to decide:

• should use LSTS for build scripts?, if yes, need module support first
• how caching works
• everything else

[andrew-johnson-4]

"doby" yeah, I want this too.