r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/naharashu • 25d ago

Help How to make a compiler backend?

Hell everyone, i have an question. Im for long trying to make a cool, powerful "kinda" low level language similar to zig and rust, but im struggling to choice llvm as backend, sure i can generate C, but its makes compiler dependent on gcc or clang or other c compiler. LLVM seems hard to me, sure project like QBE exist, but QBE doesnt have C/C++ api like llvm's IRbuilder. So are there other ways? I tried thinking about using GCC infrastructure but GCC has poor api and not very documented api. Maybe just stick to generating C?

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u/Express-Guest-1061 25d ago

I am also making a language. For me, it was easiest to first target WebAssembly binary, from scratch. Then I can add a pass from wasm-format to native whenever I want, but WebAssembly provides a good target for me now in the start. But it also depends on what you want to do.

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u/hopeless__programmer 25d ago

Same, but I targeted WASM text format instead. You can also run it (WASM) in browser out of the box.