README.md

Ilo

A programming language.

• Stack-oriented like Forth
• Whitespace-specific like Python
• Type checking like Tsoding's Porth

This project has one clear goal: to write a self-hosted compiler!

Building the Ilo compiler

Building the Ilo compiler is simple:

./configure
ninja

Ilo currently only compiles to x86_64 assembly, but will have different target architectures in the future.

Example code

import std

# foo bar
def add: int x, int y -> int
    x y +

def main: ptr argv, int argc -> int
    2 1 add 4 < if
        "Yeah\n" puts
    else
        "Huh?!\n" puts

    0  # Exit code

Compiling with Docker

Currently, Ilo is only able to compile itself to Linux x86_64. Compiling in MacOS is possible using Docker:

docker compose run --rm ilo

There are plans to extend the Ilo compiler to cross compile to MacOS.