2026-07-22T16:55:33Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:17722 2024-03-06T10:31:54Z ddc:004 open_access

Challenges and Opportunities in C/C++ Source-To-Source Compilation (Invited Paper) Bispo, João Paulino, Nuno Sousa, Luís Miguel Source-to-source compilation transpilers C/C++ code transformation The C/C++ compilation stack (Intermediate Representations (IR), compilation passes and backends) is encumbered by a steep learning curve, which we believe can be lowered by complementing it with approaches such as source-to-source compilation. Source-to-source compilation is a technology that is widely used and quite mature in certain programming environments, such as JavaScript, but that faces a low adoption rate in others. In the particular case of C and C++ some of the identified factors include the high complexity of the languages, increased difficulty in building and maintaining C/C++ parsers, or limitations on using source code as an intermediate representation. Additionally, new technologies such as Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR) have appeared as potential competitors to source-to-source compilers at this level. In this paper, we present what we have identified as current challenges of source-to-source compilation of C and C++, as well as what we consider to be opportunities and possible directions forward. We also present several examples, implemented on top of the Clava source-to-source compiler, that use some of these ideas and techniques to raise the abstraction level of compiler research on complex compiled languages such as C or C++. The examples include automatic parallelization of for loops, high-level synthesis optimisation, hardware/software partitioning with run-time decisions, and automatic insertion of inline assembly for fast prototyping of custom instructions. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik João Bispo and Nuno Paulino and Luís Miguel Sousa 2023 Is Part Of OASIcs, Volume 107, 14th Workshop on Parallel Programming and Run-Time Management Techniques for Many-Core Architectures and 12th Workshop on Design Tools and Architectures for Multicore Embedded Computing Platforms (PARMA-DITAM 2023) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/OASIcs.PARMA-DITAM.2023.2 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-177225 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.PARMA-DITAM.2023.2 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode