Appendix: The Emojicode Compiler

This chapter is dedicated to the official Emojicode Compiler.

It is inteded to give more detail on certain options and by no mean comprehensive. To obtain a full list of all command line options run emojicodec --help.

Compiling Files to an Executable Binary

The most obvious purpose of the compiler is the compilation of Emojicode source files into a binary. The compiler expects the path to a single file, which is the main file of the _ package. E.g.

emojicodec hello.emojic

By default, the output file will have the same name as the main file. You can explicitly set an output name with the -o option:

emojicodec aFile.emojic -o awesomeProgram

Compiling a Package

To compile a package to a static library you have to specify a package name with -p. E.g.

emojicodec -p catsimulator main.emojic

The output will have the name of your package, prefixed with lib and suffixed with .a. You should not change the name of the output, but you can do so with the -o option. The output file name must be suffixed with .a.

Compiling to an Object File

You can tell the compiler to generate an object file instad of a static library (archive) or exectuable with the -c flag. E.g

emojicodec -p catsimulator main.emojic -c
emojicodec hello.emojic -c

By default the output file will have the name of the main file with suffix .o instead of .emojic. You can change the output path with -o.

Compiling with Optimizations

By default, the compiler will compile your package with only some very basic optimizations. To get out the most, you can turn on optimizations with the -O flag. E.g

emojicodec -p catsimulator main.emojic -O
emojicodec hello.emojic -O

Package Search Paths

When you import a package, the compiler will search the package search paths for the requested package. The search paths are:

1. ./packages relative to the current directory.
2. Paths added with command line option -S in order of apperance from left to right.
3. Contents of the environment variable EMOJICODE_PACKAGES_PATH if set.
4. The default package search path, which is /usr/local/EmojicodePackages/ but can be changed when building the compiler.

The compiler will look for directory named after the requested package in the first package search path. If such a directory is found, the package is considered found and an archive named as describe in “Compiling A Packge” is expected. If such a directory is not found, the compiler tries with the next package search paths. If search paths are exhausted an error is raised.

Example

emojicodec test.emojic -S /opt/a -S /opt/b

If you run the above command in directory /home/me/ with the environment variable EMOJICODE_PACKAGES_PATH set to /etc/packages and test.emojic imports a package called dog the compiler will look for it in the following locations:

1. /home/me/packages/dog
2. /opt/a/dog
3. /opt/b/dog
4. /etc/packages/dog
5. /usr/local/EmojicodePackages/dog

Switch the Compiler into JSON Mode

The option --json can be used to switch the compiler into JSON mode. When working in JSON mode the compiler will print all errors and warnings to standard error as a JSON array.

Package Report

To generate a JSON report of the package the compiler compiled, you can pass the -r option. These reports are used to build this documentation.