Building an optimizing compiler

What Hacker News says

1. trealiraDec 2023
   Bob Morgan's book Building an Optimizing Compiler is entirely focused on modern compiler optimizations (and it was published in 1997). It goes over building a control flow graph, various optimizations you can do with that, alias analysis, static single assignment form, CFG dominator-based optimizations, instruction scheduling, register allocation, and emitting object code. It doesn't talk about lexing, parsing, NFAs/DFAs, etc. like most compiler books.

   Static Program Analysis[1] also seems helpful to someone trying to write a compiler that does optimizations that require advanced analyses: https://cs.au.dk/~amoeller/spa/

   For garbage collection, there's the Garbage Collection handbook[2]. I'm not aware of better additional resources, though.

   [1]: https://cs.au.dk/~amoeller/spa/

   [2]: https://gchandbook.org/

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2. astrangeJun 2022
   The Dragon Book is a bad compiler book. Don’t recommend it just because it has a cool name.

   Grune’s Parsing Techniques and Morgan’s Building an Optimizing Compiler are okay.

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3. SamReidHughesJul 2018
   This book is not completionist but instead it's to the point and avoids wasting your time: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/155558179X/

   [Edit: it's Building an Optimizing Compiler by Bob Morgan.]

   That's assuming you don't want to waste your time reading about parsing, type checking, or serializing an AST into some form of assembly, the parts of a compiler which just aren't that interesting.

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4. cestithFeb 2017
   I already answered about "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" but then two more language-implementation-centric books came to mind today.

   1. "Writing Compilers and Interpreters" by Ronald Mak 2. "Building an Optimizing Compiler" by Bob Morgan

   Morgan's book is well sought after and out of print. It's one of the few books in the field for which the print edition prices keep climbing.

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5. kenjacksonAug 2010
   Compilers is a huge topic. Think a topic the size of databases, with way less visibility.

   The Dragon book is probably the best introductory text. The new version that came out a few years ago actually did improve the original text a fair bit. Although there is a lack of discussion about SSA in the text.

   While most compiler books spend most of the text talking about the front-end of the compiler the crazy interesting stuff is in the backend. The new Dragon book greatly improves here over the old one, but I'd also recommend two other texts:

   1) Morgan, Building an Optimizing Compiler -- some people love the writing style. Others hate it, but the material is solid. 2) Muchnick, Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation -- Great book. Must read if you're serious about optimizations.

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6. trealiraDec 2023
   > heavily optimising compilers a lot less common.

   Not just that, but the theory that drives modern compilers, like graph coloring register allocation and static single assignment form, weren't conceived until the mid 1980s (1984 and 1986 each), and better implementations of those theories were written about in the 90s. Linear scan register allocation was first written about in 1999.

   You can compare these books:

   Engineering a compiler: VAX-11 code generation and optimization, which was published in 1982, talks about the design and implementation of the PL/I compiler for the DEC VAX-11.

   You can compare it to Bob Morgan's Building an Optimizing Compiler, which was published in 1997. The techniques he discusses there are a lot closer to how LLVM works today than the 1982 book.

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