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CMU Gwydion project's implementation of the Dylan programming language.
Dylan is an object-oriented language with many powerful features, including
automatic memory management (garbage collection), generic functions (also
known as multiple dispatch or multi-methods), multiple inheritance, a
powerful and safe macro facility for extending the language's syntax, and a
powerful class and function library. Though it is a DYnamic LANguage, it
includes facilities for making compiled programs more efficient than many
other dynamic languages.
The Dylan language was originally developed by Apple, but the project
was dropped just as the language definition was being finished and
before a production-quality compiler was complete. The Gwydion
project and Harlequin have continued use and development of the
language.
Gwydion Dylan actually contains two implementations of the language.
One, called Mindy (Mindy Is Not Dylan Yet), is a bytecode compiler and
interpreter that implements most of the language except for the macro
facility. The other, d2c, is a compiler for the full language that
uses C as its target "assembly language". The d2c compiler was
written in Dylan and bootstrapped using Mindy.
A copy of the d2c compiler binary is required by the port to
bootstrap the entire system. As the Gwydion documentation says,
Recompiling the entire system takes over an hour on 64meg 200mhz
Pentium Pro running Windows/NT. This is almost all for the
compilation of the d2c runtime and compiler; compiling just Mindy
takes only a few minutes. d2c also uses lots of memory, especially
when compiling itself: you want at least 48 meg, and more is
better.
For more information about Gwydion Dylan, see the Gwydion Dylan maintainers
WWW: http://www.gwydiondylan.org/
-Peter S. Housel- housel@acm.org
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