Highlights
What I built
- Recursive-descent parser supporting nested unary expressions.
- Custom IR lowered into stack-backed assembly with fixup passes.
- Incremental tests from return literals to structured control flow.
← Back to Projects
SystemsIteratingFeatured
C Compiler
OCaml compiler pipeline from C source to x86-64 assembly.
As I gained a deeper interest in understanding lower level systems, I realized that I never understood the basis behind compilers, the actual foundation of programming. Thus, I researched what I could about compilers, and I stumbled upon Nora Sandler's book on writing compilers. Here, I learnt the principles behind developing a compiler starting with a real lexer -> parser -> IR -> codegen pipeline where I could inspect every stage. One cool thing is that the book didn't spoonfeed me the code; rather, it gave the foundations, which I had to apply to the best of my ability.
- Date
- Spring 2026
- Signal
- Systems
- Build stage
- Actively expanding language features
- Stack
- OCaml, Recursive Descent
compilersystemsirdebuggingocaml
Pipeline visual
Project notes
Architecture
How the system works
- Lexer tokenizes source into typed tokens.
- Parser builds AST, then semantic analysis resolves symbols and scopes.
- TACKY IR flattens expressions before architecture-specific codegen.
- Emitter outputs AT&T syntax x86-64 assembly for clang linking.
Challenges
What made it hard
- Memory-to-memory instructions in x86 required explicit scratch-register fixups.
- Nested unary operations exposed edge cases in AST lowering.
- Apple Silicon workflow needed careful x86_64 target handling.
Lessons
What I learned
- As expression increases, IR becomes everso more important.
- To optimize debugging, testing each compiler stage independently is a necessity.
- Reading generated assembly is still the fastest debug loop.
Stack / materials
OCamlRecursive DescentTACKY IRx86-64Make
- Roadmap: binary operators, local variables, richer control flow, function calls.
- Current priority is correctness and clean lowering, not optimization passes.
Media timeline
Build photos, clips, and process visuals. The goal is to show how the project evolved, not just the final screenshot.
AST output
Assembly output
Build snapshot
Gallery 3