TMCC (Trying to Make C Compiler) should be a minimalistic C compiler written for educational purposes. Initial goal of the project is to be able to compile the compiler itself.

The aim is to significantly boost my skills in C programming, compiler design and understanding, assembly and formal standard comprehension.

1. Compiler should fully follow one of C standards, probably ANSI C and provide fully-working standard library.
2. Target platform is x86-64 Linux with theoretical support for other platforms in the future. My development platform is Mac OS, so I will run it in QEMU or just in a VM.
3. Compiler should produce NASM assembly code, which is then assembled and linked using NASM.
4. Ideal goal - self-hosting compiler.
5. No LLVM! LLVM is great, but what's the fun then if all the backend will be done by it?

Base compiler parts:

• Tokenizer
• Base parser / AST
• Semantic analyzer
• Code generator
• Assembler / linker stage
• Simple AST optimizer
• Standard library implementation
• Command-line flags
• Preprocessor
• Self-hosting compiler
• Primitive register allocation
• Arena based allocation of AST nodes, types and symbols

Language features:

• Primitive types (int, char, float, double)
• Arithmetic binary operators (+, -, *, /)
• Bitwise binary operators (&, |, ^, <<, >>)
• Logical binary operators (&&, ||)
• Unary operators (+, -, !, ~)
• Comparison operators (==, !=, <, >, <=, >=)
• Variable declarations
• Variable initializations
• Pointers
• Arrays
• Structs
• Unions
• Enums
• Functions declarations
• if / else
• while
• for
• do / while
• switch / case
• goto / labels
• break / continue
• return
• sizeof
• Type qualifiers (const, volatile, restrict)
• Storage class specifiers (static, extern)
• Global variables
• Custom typedefs
• Dereference and address-of operators (*, &)
• Function pointers
• Variadic arguments
• Preprocessor directives (#include, #define, #ifdef, #endif)
• Comments
• Support for multiple source files
• Support for header files
• Attributes (__attribute__((...)))