bf-llvm

What?

A tiny JIT-compiler for Brainfuck.

Why?

To play with C++11 and LLVM.

How?

I have found that simply and reliably building things with C++11 and LLVM is, with the best will in the world, a freakin' nightmare. But hopefully, build.sh should take care of it for you. You have two options:

1. Be on OSX with Homebrew installed, and run

    $ ./build.sh --osx
   

This will brew install llvm33, which seems to compile LLVM, and therefore takes a few minutes. You probably don't want to be on battery for that. I have only tested this on OSX 10.9.

2. Be on something else with Vagrant installed, and run

    $ ./build.sh --vagrant-host
   

This will build and start a Ubuntu 12.04 VM for you and then download and install LLVM and Clang. It will download about 400MB of stuff. You probably don't want to be on a mobile internet connection for that. I have also only tested this on OSX 10.9.

You should see Hello World! which is what

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.
+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

is supposed to print.

Issues

• I think casting to thunk and calling directly is no longer the Right Way To Do It. (I wrote this ages ago and only just made it compile with LLVM 3.3.)

• I have probably cargo-culted a load of other unnecessary LLVM stuff.

• llvm-config --libs all is overkill.

• No error checking.

• BF program is hard-coded.

Credit

The Vagrant set up is "strongly inspired" by the one in mozilla/playdoh.