Abstract:
In early days, compiler development has been a tedious and time consuming
task requiring experts such as computer scientists and engineers. For
instance, it is said that the development of the first FORTRAN complier has
consumed almost 18 man years. Traditionally all phases from lexical
analysis to code generation had to be coded for each compiler from the
scratch. However, complier development has now become a software
engineering task where a compiler developer can use various software tools
to build and test a compiler within few weeks. These days, some application
developers have also motivated to construct their own compilers before
starting software solutions for specific problems. This research study uses
the software engineering approach to develop a light-weight Java compiler.
We have studied various tools for compiler construction and chosen a tool
set comprising JFLEX, JAVA CUP and ASM. It was found that a specific
light-weight Java compiler could be structured in few weeks. This project
delivered a light-weight Java complier of size less than 1MB, which would
require 15MB 1.2 Java compiler otherwise. It can be concluded that the
software engineering approach to compiler construction allows the compiler
developers to customize or extend an existing compiler to produce a specific
purpose light-weight compiler in an efficient and effective manner.
