Merging ten pull requests into submain in a single day signifies a turning point for Cx. We're talking about the JIT backend making a leap from theoretical to tangible execution. This involved delivering the first real JIT-compiled arithmetic and memory operations using Cranelift, among other things. If you’ve been following the backend development, today’s progress might get you nodding along with me.
First Real JIT Execution
If you’ve ever stared at a scaffold and wondered whether it’ll hold when it all comes together, the journey of CX-25 is a familiar one. PR #78 took the skeleton of HostBoundary::execute and fleshed it out into a functioning Cranelift JIT pipeline. Now, Cx can compile arithmetic operations like iadd, isub, and imul, right up to returning a result. We added nine integration tests to make sure the holistic structure is sound. This marks the first time Cx programs produce correct results through the Cranelift path, handing the baton to stack operations in CX-26.
PR #79 extended this by introducing stack memory support, implementing Alloca, load, and store, facilitating byte-specific operations that dare not step on each other’s toes. With these foundational pieces falling into place, the JIT path is no longer just a potential, but a lever we can pull on.
