Gunderscript 2 Scripting Engine

Uses a fork of Mozilla NanoJIT library for code generation which is subject to MPL 2.0 license. Uses the Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative C++ garbage Collector, subject to its own licenses.

Introduction:

Gunderscript 2 is the successor to the original Gunderscript scripting language. For more information on Gunderscript, see http://github.com/gundermanc/gunderscript

Gunderscript 2 attempts to learn from the mistakes of Gunderscript 1 and is a completely new language that is written mostly from scratch in C++. The focus is to create a clean, object oriented scripting language that borrows the best features from C#, Java, C, and C++ and that is small, efficient, and modular in design and that supports native code compilation and garbage collected memory management.

Gunderscript 2 is intended to be a strongly typed language for the Javascript, Lua, and Squirrel occupied market sector and will be aptly suited to use as a game engine scripting language, Unix command shell, or general purpose scripting environment.

Roadmap and progress:

Below is a high level over view of the ongoing road map. For specific work items, please see the Github issues page.

Lexer : 100%
Parser (except for IF, FOR, WHILE, DO/WHILE and other control flow) : 100%
Syntax tree walker : 100%
Semantic (type checker), minus control flow : 100%
Code generator for VM and VM : 65%
End to end control flow support
- IF : 100%
- FOR : 100%
- WHILE : 100%
End to end object support (minus inheritance) : 85%
- Auto properties : 100%
- Explicit Properties : 50%
- Methods : 100%
- Generic Object support : 50%
Investigate more complex language features:
- Exceptions
- Switches
- Enhanced or "shortcut" operators
Refactor and cleanup
Unified, extensible engine API.

Project Layout:

cli: Contains the example command line executable for Gunderscript 2.
cmake: Some additional CMAKE macros.
common: The Gunderscript engine common static library.
compiler: The Gunderscript compiler code static library.
googletest: The Google C++ Test framework.
include: Headers for the Gunderscript static libraries.
nanojit: A fork of Mozilla NanoJIT library.
runtime: The Gunderscript runtime static library.

Building:

Build the current code by generating build files for your platform with CMake. Project has been tested on Windows 10 Professional 10586 and is CI built on Ubuntu 15.10 and should be able to run cross platform with no issue. OS X support through GCC 4.9 is low priority and should be considered experimental.

Officially Gunderscript 2 supports the following build configurations via CMAKE:

Windows 7 and newer, Visual Studio 2015, MSVC++ 19.*
Ubuntu 15.10, GCC 4.9, GNU Make.

Building on Windows:

Install:
- Visual Studio 2015 Community or Newer
- CMAKE or CMAKE GUI.
- Git
Git Clone the repo
Run git submodule init and then git submodule update in root of repo.
Run cmake . in root of repo.
Launch GUNDERSCRIPT.sln solution file in Visual Studio.
Build. The gunderscript_cli.exe file is the command line executable.
- To see intermediate script compilation steps use -l, -p, and -t.
- To see NanoJIT IR code and assembly cmd line options you must enable gunderscript_force_define_debug.
Other project files are Gunderscript components.

Building on Linux

Run ./build_self_test.sh script to download all dependencies and build
Refer to the script's contents for more detailed build work flow.

Testing

All engine code is unit tested. To run tests, compile the project and run the gunderscript_compiler_tests and gunderscript_runtime_tests executables. There are currently over 350 tests covering almost all of the lexer, parser, and type checker all well as all completed code gen functionality.

Running a script

To run a script, download or compile the Gunderscript executable for your platform. Run ./gunderscript_cli [filename] and Gunderscript will compile and run the script. At the moment, the only end-to-end completed functionality is:

Main Method called at start.
+, -, *, /, % =, !=, &&, ||, !, <- operators
Variable assignment and reference.
Typecast between primitive types.
Primitive types:
- bool
- int8
- int32
- float32
Call functions, overload functions, etc.
Return values from functions.
Control Flow Elements:
- If, else, else if statements.
- For loops.
- While loops.
Objects without inheritance
- Auto properties
- Methods