wishlist.txt

{
    title       : Wishlist
    description : One day my dream will come true
}

Wishlist: Compiler
------------------ 

#### Better match statements:
At the moment, we generate a long chain of if statements. This is slow,
inefficient, and ugly. We also generate too many copies.

References:

- [http://synrc.com/publications/cat/Functional%20Languages/L/match/jun08.pdf](http://synrc.com/publications/cat/Functional%20Languages/L/match/jun08.pdf)
- [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-15975-4_48](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-15975-4_48)
- [http://pauillac.inria.fr/~maranget/opt-pat.ps.gz](http://pauillac.inria.fr/~maranget/opt-pat.ps.gz)
- [https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/match.pdf](https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/match.pdf)
- ...and probably a bunch more.

#### More Platforms:
Pretty much self explanatory. More code gen backends, more supported
OSes, etc.

#### Self hosting:
Right now 6m is written in C. This should change. Currently being
slowly worked on.

#### Better C ABI Compat:
Right now, we have our own ABI for function calls. It's compatible for
word sized arguments and large structs, but for small structs, it would
be nice to also be compatible.

We also are not currently compatible with Plan 9 C.

#### Packed Structs
At the moment they're not supported. It's an open question to whether
they should be, but it might be necessary for C compatibility.

#### C Binding Autogeneration
Finishing C Binding Autogeneration. There's a good part of it done,
but we should be able to generate references to other packages when
binding, so that, eg, a `libc` package doesn't have a distinct
`libc.size_t` from a foo package which includes a header that defines
`size_t`.

Right now we generate all symbols in the closure of includes into one
package.

#### Optimizations:
At the moment, we basically don't do them. This should be fixed. This
will probably be worked on as/after self hosting is completed.

References:


- [http://ssabook.gforge.inria.fr/latest/book.pdf](http://ssabook.gforge.inria.fr/latest/book.pdf)
- [http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Compiler-Design-Implementation-Muchnick/dp/1558603204](http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Compiler-Design-Implementation-Muchnick/dp/1558603204)

#### Better error handling:
What will this look like? Needs thought.

#### Better safety:
What will this look like? Needs thought.

#### Thread local storage:
This goes hand in hand with threads. It's also a bit OS specific.

References:


- [http://www.darlinghq.org/for-developers/thread-local-storage-on-os-x](http://www.darlinghq.org/for-developers/thread-local-storage-on-os-x)
- [http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/tls.pdf](http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/tls.pdf)
- [http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/abi.pdf](http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/abi.pdf)

#### Debug support:
Right now, we can debug on the asm level, looking at comments. Adding
line information support is trivial, but actually harmful to debugging.
Proper DWARF information (or stabs on plan9) would be helpful here.

References:


- [http://www.dwarfstd.org/Download.php](http://www.dwarfstd.org/Download.php)
- [http://www.dwarfstd.org/doc/Debugging%20using%20DWARF.pdf](http://www.dwarfstd.org/doc/Debugging%20using%20DWARF.pdf)
    
#### Assembler:
Using different assemblers on different platforms suck. 6m should
use our own assembler, maybe even linked in as a library. This
assembler should probably be the one actually writing out the debug
info from above, as well as being able to generate usefiles. Eg:

    .func foo.bar : type { ...asm... }

Or something. I haven't put enough thought into the details yet.

References:


- [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html)
- [http://developer.amd.com/resources/documentation-articles/developer-guides-manuals/](http://developer.amd.com/resources/documentation-articles/developer-guides-manuals/)

Wishlist: Libraries
-------------------

#### Improved libstd:
There are a large number of deficiencies and gaps in the standard library:

 - Hashing and random number generation should be cryptographically
     secure by default.
 - DNS doesn't currently support AAAA records on Posixy systems; This
     should be fixed.
 - Finish up floating point I/O
 - System call coverage is rather spotty.
 - And overall, just a more well rounded libstd would be good.

#### Math:
Floating point is hard. Let's code it. A reasonably complete floating
point math library should be available as 'use math'.


#### Unicode:
Normalization, canonicalization, collation, and all that good stuff.
This is going to be big/complicated, and probably shouldn't go into
libstd.

References:


- [http://www.unicode.org/reports/](http://www.unicode.org/reports/)

#### Fleshing out libthread:
Libthread has landed, but it's not very useful right now. More
features should probably go in.

References:


- [http://www.amazon.com/The-Multiprocessor-Programming-Revised-Reprint/dp/0123973376](http://www.amazon.com/The-Multiprocessor-Programming-Revised-Reprint/dp/0123973376)
- [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/pthread.h.html](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/pthread.h.html)
- [https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/thread/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/thread/)
- ...other thread APIs?

#### Crypto:
A cryptography library. This should have reusable interfaces
to a bunch of crypto primitives. Currently, libcryptohash
exists; this should continue building on that work.

References:

  - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cryptographic_algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cryptographic_algorithms)


#### SSL:
Built on libcrypto, we should have an SSL library that can be
used for a variety of things. I've started on it, and then run
out of time.

References:

  - [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5246](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5246)

#### HTTP:
Yep. HTTP library. HTTP is everywhere, might as well support it.
HTTP2 is probably also desirable.

References:

  - [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.txt](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.txt)
  - [https://http2.github.io/http2-spec/](https://http2.github.io/http2-spec/)

#### Restructured Text(?):
I'd like decent documentation generators. Restructured text looks
sane. I'd like to be able to manipulate it from code.

References:

  - [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html)

#### Whatever else:
Librarires are useful. If it's generally useful enough, and I'm satisfied with
the stability and code quality, I'll toss it in with everything else in mc/.

If not, I'll link to it.

Wishlist: Utilities
-------------------

#### Documentation generator:
This should probably be built on a slightly extended restructured
text implementation, although GFM is also probably not a bad idea.

#### Mbld:
There's a lot of potential for caching the dependency graph, and
making builds lightning fast and parallel.

#### Parser generator:
Working on something that works like a merged lex/yacc.

#### IDL Generator:
Protobufs are nice. Thrift is also ok.

#### Package fetcher:
Should probably wait until packages are a thing; Will fetch,
install, build, packages that a bit of software depends on. Probably
should be part of mbld.

#### Static analyzer:
Pie in the sky project -- statically catching mistakes is probably
a good idea.