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Cake - C23 and Beyond

The C Programming language 1978

"C is a general-purpose programming language which features economy of expression, modern control flow and data structures, and a rich set of operators. C is not a "very high level" language, nor a "big" one, and is not specialized to any particular area of application. But its absence of restrictions and its generality make it more convenient and effective for many tasks than supposedly more powerful languages."

"In our experience, C has proven to be a pleasant, expressive, and versatile language for a wide variety of programs. It is easy to learn, and it wears well as one's experience with it grows"

The C Programming language Second Edition 1988

"As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way."

🍰 Cake

Cake is a compiler front-end written from scratch in C, adhering to the C23 language specification and beyond. It serves as a platform for experimenting with new features, including C2Y language proposals, safety enhancements, and extensions such as lambda expressions and defer statements.

The current backend generates C89-compatible code, which can be pipelined with existing compilers to produce executables.

Cake aims to enhance C's safety by providing high-quality warning messages and advanced flow analysis, including object lifetime checks.

Web Playground

This is the best way to try.

http://thradams.com/cake/playground.html

Use cases

Note: Cake is still in development and has not yet reached a stable version.

Cake can be used as a static analyzer alongside other compilers. It generates SARIF files, which are recognized by popular IDEs such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, providing a seamless integration.

It can also function as a preprocessor, converting C23 code to C89. This allows developers to use modern or experimental features while targeting compilers that do not yet support the latest language standards.

The objective of the C89 generation is to produce low-level C code, simplifying the process of writing C backends dedicated to code generation.

Previous versions of Cake included a conversion mode to translate code while preserving the preprocessor parts. Although useful, this process could not guarantee 100% conversion, functioning more as a tool than a compiler. With the new versions of Cake moving toward becoming a more traditional compiler, the previous mode has been discontinued at version 0.9.36. This version is online here http://thradams.com/cake3/playground.html.

Features

Build

GitHub https://github.com/thradams/cake

MSVC build instructions

Open the Developer Command Prompt of visual studio. Go to the src directory and type

cl build.c && build

This will build cake.exe, then run cake on its own source code.

GCC on Linux build instructions

Got to the src directory and type:

gcc build.c -o build && ./build

Clang on Linux/Windows/MacOS build instructions

Got to the src directory and type:

clang build.c -o build && ./build

To run unit tests windows/linux add -DTEST for instance:

gcc -DTEST build.c -o build && ./build

Emscripten build instructions (web)

Emscripten https://emscripten.org/ is required.

First do the normal build.

The normal build also generates a file lib.c that is the amalgamated version of the "core lib".

Then at ./src dir type:

call emcc -DMOCKFILES "lib.c" -o "Web\cake.js" -s WASM=0 -s EXPORTED_FUNCTIONS="['_CompileText']" -s EXTRA_EXPORTED_RUNTIME_METHODS="['ccall', 'cwrap']"

This will generate the \src\Web\cake.js

Running cake at command line

Make sure cake is on your system path.

Samples

cake source.c

this will output ./out/source.c

See Manual

Road map

References

How did we get here?

A very nice introduction was written by Al Williams

C23 Programming For Everyone

https://hackaday.com/2022/09/13/c23-programming-for-everyone/

Influenced by

Participating

You can contribute by trying out cake, reporting bugs, and giving feedback.

Have a suggestion for C?

DISCORD SERVER

https://discord.gg/YRekr2N65S

How cake is developed?

I am using Visual Studio 2022 IDE to write/debug cake source. Cake is parsing itself using the includes of MSVC and it generates the out dir after build.

I use Visual Studio code with WSL for testing and compiling the code for Linux.

Cake source code is not using any extension so the output is the same of input. This compilation is useful for tracking errors together with the unit tests.

Cake is not C++

CFront was the original C++ compiler, designed to translate C++ code into C.

Although CFront was initially compatible with C89, it eventually diverged from C’s evolution.

In contrast, Cake stays true to the core development of C, ensuring full compatibility.

Its extensions aim to preserve the essence of C while allowing developers to experiment and contribute to C’s evolution using an open-source compiler written in C.