jarlang

Jarlang is an Erlang compiler which outputs to ES6 spec JavaScript, written in a combination of Erlang and JavaScript (NodeJS).

Overview

Jarlang is implemented via the following, simple, pipeline:

1. Utilising the Erlang compiler, we generate Erlang's intermediate language, CoreErlang
2. Utilise built in Erlang tools to generate an abstract syntax tree from generated CoreErlang, not too dissimilarly from projects such as LuvvieScript and ElixirScript
3. Map the generated CoreErlang abstract syntax tree into an equivalent JavaScript abstract syntax tree
4. Utilise NodeJS and tools such as escodegen to generate valid JavaScript.

Our JavaScript AST is based off the documentation you can find here: JSTree AST.

Getting Started

Jarlang is still in development and can't at this time can only transpile trivial pieces of Erlang to JavaScript. The following instructions will help you get an environment set up for development and testing purposes only. This tool is not at all ready for any real world usage.

Requirements

• Erlang 18 (Other versions may work, but any development and testing so far has only been done using version 18)
• NodeJS v8.8.0 (Other versions may work, but any development and testing so far has only been done using v8.8.0)

Installing

1. Clone the repo with git clone https://github.com/vereis/jarlang on the commandline which should create a jarlang folder containing all our source code
2. Go into the jarlang folder with cd jarlang
3. Get required NodeJS packages with the command npm install
4. Run the make or make debug commands which will build either the release build of Jarlang or the debug build of Jarlang respectively.
5. Run jarlang with the command ebin/jarlang or edebug/jarlang followed by paths to erlang files to compile into JavaScript. Additional info is available if you run the command jarlang -h.
6. Add jarlang.js to your webpage and whatever erlang code you've transpiled and hope it all works out :)

Automatic Testing

Run the command make test which will compile the project into the etesting directory and run the following tests:

• Eunit tests in all modules where we have tests implemented
• Dialyzer performing static analysis of Jarlang
• Elvis to lint our code to confirm to a given style

Eventually, we will need to add some rudimentary testing on the JavaScript side, as well as testing to ensure the results of running Erlang code and transpiled JavaScript code are functionally the same.

Acknowledgements

• The escodegen guys for making generating JavaScript code so painless.
• The people who documented the EStree specification. Thank you. So much.