Re: [Tinycc-devel] Stack based target machine

[Anton Ertl]

Nick Kelsey wrote:
> Unfortunately they have insufficient resources to run TCC natively, so I 
> am looking at compiling to a virtual machine.

In November I wrote here about using Vmgen
<http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/vmgen/> to build a stack-based
VM for tcc.  For such a project I would volunteer to do the work
having to do with Vmgen, but I would need to cooperate with someone
who finds his way around tcc and can deal with the object file
format.

For your project, Vmgen would not help you for the VM interpreter on
the embedded platform, but if you also want an interpreter on the
server side for debugging the programs or the tcc port, it might still
be worth it.

> I am leaning towards the idea of a stack based VM to keep things simple 
> on the VM side (ie no general purpose registers thus no register 
> decoding and addressing required by the host cpu). In reality the 
> hardest aspect will be the compiler port so that will dictate the VM 
> architecture more than anything else.

Yes.  I am more a believer in stack-based VMs myself, but in your case
a register-based VM might be beneficial; however, it's probably best
to do what fits easiest in tcc.

- anton