Amsterdam Compiler Kit

Amsterdam Compiler Kit

Developer(s)	Andrew Tanenbaum, Ceriel Jacobs
Stable release	6.0pre4 / August 8, 2010 (2010-08-08)
Written in	C
Operating system	Minix, Unix-like
Type	Retargetable compiler
License	BSD licenses
Website	tack.sourceforge.net

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) is a fast, lightweight and retargetable compiler suite and toolchain written by Andrew Tanenbaum and Ceriel Jacobs, and is MINIX's native toolchain. The ACK was originally closed-source software (that allowed binaries to be distributed for MINIX as a special case), but in April 2003 it was released under an open source BSD license. It has frontends for programming languages C, Pascal, Modula-2, Occam, and BASIC.

The ACK's notability stems from the fact that in the early 1980s it was one of the first portable compilation systems designed to support multiple source languages and target platforms.

The ACK achieves maximum portability by using an intermediate language using bytecode, called EM. Each language front-end produces EM object files, which are then processed through several generic optimisers before being translated by a back-end into native machine code.

ACK comes with a generic linker and librarian capable of manipulating files in the ACK's own a.out-based format; it will work on files containing EM code as well as native machine code. However, EM code cannot be linked to native machine code without translating the EM binary first.

Target processors

• 6502
• 6800 (assembler only)
• 6805 (assembler only)
• 6809 (assembler only)
• ARM
• 8080^*
• Z80
• Z8000
• i86^*
• i386
• 68000
• 68020
• 68040
• NS32016
• S2650 (assembler only)
• SPARC
• VAX4
• PDP11

^* Version 6.0

Broadcom VideoCore IV (BCM2708) (branch dtrg-videocore: http://hg.code.sf.net/p/tack/tack)

See also

• C--
• LLVM
• GNU Compiler Collection
• Portable C Compiler
• Small Device C Compiler

External links

• Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) information sheet