lola robins

lolang is a compiler idea i have been planning to make for over two years (as of the summer of 2024.) this is a project i mainly wanted to do just for fun, and as a learning experience.

 

my goal is to start with designing the base compiler, as well as adding a half-decent build system with support for managing dependencies, and then slowly adding libraries and bindings for C as-needed while writing my other project ideas in lolang simultaneously. the reason i am not opting to use llvm is support for embedded platforms that use pre-existing C compilers, and would also like to just try out code generation manually

 

at the moment, i am writing the compiler and toolchain in C. in the future, i plan to have lolang written inside of lolang. source code will output to C and then be passed to a C compiler, allowing compilation across architectures and platforms where a C compiler and stdlib are already suppported. initially, the C std library will be a dependency for bindings of necessary system functions and calls (likely for quite a while, again, well established and wide plaform support) but i intend to write a base C library specific to the needs of lolang in the future if possible.

 

current plans for development:

• complete lexer/parser and source code output
• centre around namespaces and projects for easy dependency and library management
• create customizable build system that supports fetching dependencies online through git
• write standard library for lolang (with cstdlib dependency) to be used in all source files with a mixture of C and lolang. will compile to a library that will either be dynamically or statically linked to the finished executable
• write bindings for posix library bindings and functions, ensure cross-platform support between linux/macos/freebsd priority
• write *nice working and hopefully not bad* std libraries for modern language features such as multithreading (done by passing a callback function, which can be declared inline), cloning without strange behaviour, networking, embedding raw files, and serialization/deserialization for common markup and configuration formats such as ini, yaml, and json.
• write extra libraries and bindings for things such as sdl3, opengl, vulkan, a custom gui library, openssl, zlib, and other miscellaneous common libaries used on linux & other posix-like operating systems.
• low priority: bindings and std library for targets such as windows, as well as embedded devices supported by arduino ide & platformio (with or without freeRTOS support.)

2d city builder

my intent was to learn how to use an existing game or graphic library to write a 2d city-building game with simple graphics and low system speg requirements, either in C, or in lolang once possible

 

remote access minecraft server container manager

i plan to write a program specifically for containerizing common minecraft server implementations such as the many common forks stemming from craftbukkit. this will securely allow remote access for server administrators with extensive control over their server from the panel. this will also allow choosing limits for resource usage such as memory and CPU, and isolate the server from the host's filesystem.

 

a minecraft server

building off of the notchian protocol for minecraft servers that wiki.vg graciously reverse-engineered and documented, i would like to create minecraft server implementation as an experiment into networking as well as generating 3d worlds programatically. this would be mainly focused around creative building (specifically city building) and would allow me to experiment with programming smooth city generation in-game.