ezyang’s blog

the arc of software bends towards understanding

Hoopl

Debugging compilers with optimization fuel

Today I would like to describe how I pin down compiler bugs, specifically, bugs tickled by optimizations, using a neat feature that Hoopl has called optimization fuel. Unfortunately, this isn’t a particularly Googleable term, so hopefully this post will get some Google juice too. Optimization fuel was originally introduced by David Whalley in 1994 in […]

  • June 27, 2011

Hoopl: Dataflow analysis

Once you’ve determined what dataflow facts you will be collecting, the next step is to write the transfer function that actually performs this analysis for you! Remember what your dataflow facts mean, and this step should be relatively easy: writing a transfer function usually involves going through every possible statement in your language and thinking […]

  • April 8, 2011

Hoopl: Dataflow lattices

The essence of dataflow optimization is analysis and transformation, and it should come as no surprise that once you’ve defined your intermediate representation, the majority of your work with Hoopl will involve defining analysis and transformations on your graph of basic blocks. Analysis itself can be further divided into the specification of the dataflow facts […]

  • April 4, 2011

Hoopl guided tour: Base system

Hoopl is a higher-order optimization library. We think it’s pretty cool! This series of blog post is meant to give a tutorial-like introduction to this library, supplementing the papers and the source code. I hope this series will also have something for people who aren’t interested in writing optimization passes with Hoopl, but are interested […]

  • April 1, 2011

Picturing Hoopl transfer/rewrite functions

Hoopl is a “higher order optimization library.” Why is it called “higher order?” Because all a user of Hoopl needs to do is write the various bits and pieces of an optimization, and Hoopl will glue it all together, the same way someone using a fold only needs to write the action of the function […]

  • February 16, 2011