README.md

---

This repo contains the main source code for Mank. It includes the compiler, tests, and some example programs.

The language specification is in another repo: https://github.com/MacDue/Mank-Spec

What is Mank?

proc main {
  println!("Hello World");
}

Mank is a modern, strongly typed, and garbage-collected mid-level language. Mank aims to provide more safety and portability than C, while also providing high-level features, such as lambdas & closures, type inference, sum types, and more.

Mank was developed for my final year project at the University Of Manchester.

Check out the examples for an idea of how the language works. The most interesting ones are:

• xo.mank
  • Noughts and crosses game
• raytracer.mank
  • Simple raytracer
• while_lang.mank
  • While language interpreter
• manksay.mank
  • A 'cowsay' like command-line toy
• brainfsk.mank
  • A brain f**k (an esoteric programming language) interpreter
• epsilon.mank
  • Martin Escardo's epsilon function (an "impossible" functional)
• modulus.mank
  • Modulus of continuity (another "impossible" functional)
• s_expr_calc.mank
  • S-expression calculator

Online Demo

You can try a version of the Mank compiler running in the browser here: https://macdue.github.io/Mank-Explorer/ (WebAssembly support required).

NB You can't currently run the Mank code in the browser, but you can view the output LLVM IR alongside the AST or any compiler errors that may have occurred.

Building

Note: Mank has only ever been built on Linux -- it would likely work on other platforms but there likely will be some minor fixes needed.

Mank requires LLVM 10 (later or earlier versions are likely not going to work). A modern version of g++ is also needed to compile the Mank compiler (gcc 9.3 was used for development).

From wherever you have cloned this repo to, do the following:

1. Download the submodules

   git submodule update --init --recursive
   

2. Build the compiler (CMake required)

   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .. && make mankc
   

   (you can also do -DDCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release instead if you like)

3. (Optionally) run the tests

    ./tools/run_all_tests.sh  # (from the root of the repo)

This will create a mankc executable (in the build folder).

Using the compiler

You can run it directly (e.g. ./mankc ./hello_world.mank --codegen), however, this will just print the generated LLVM IR to the standard out.

To produce executables from Mank programs you can use the mank.sh script. For example, from the build folder you can do ../tools/mank.sh ./hello_world.mank which will create an executable called hello_world (in the same folder as the source).

Note: if you use mank.sh in another folder you need to set the MANK_HOME environment variable to point to a folder that contains the mankc executable.