Compiling ATS code

ATS Compiler

atscc, sometimes called patscc in ATS/Postiats, is a wrapper utility to allow easier compilation of ATS source code than by using patsopt directly.

Here is more information on 'patscc' and 'patsopt':

http://www.ats-lang.org/Resources.html#ATS-Toolkit

In order to compile ATS2 programs, you can now do something like:

patscc -o test test.dats test_header.sats test_helper.dats

For considerably large and complex projects (involving both ATS code and C code), it may be beneficial to use 'patsopt' directly in a Makefile. In most cases, 'patscc' is adequate for handling the compilation of ATS code.

Build systems

Using Makefiles

While using Makefiles is both the most common way to compile ATS programs and is also used in the standard way, there are a couple of Makefiles that can be included in ATS programs to make building ATS programs quick: search for examples that include atsmake-pre.mk and/or atsmake-post.mk.

CMake

Read the docs for ATS-CMake.

Gradle

Gradle is, along with Makefiles, currently being used for building JNI applications (mixing Java and ATS code). One example is a calculator application. It is also being used to make available a simple wrapper for Makefiles that allows ATS projects using standard Makefiles to be be used within Java IDEs, like IntelliJATS.

Header Inclusion

You can include headers using non-default locations, for instance:

staload JNI = "{$JNI}/SATS/jni.sats"

IF JNI is an environment variable, equal to say $PATSHOMERELOC/contrib/JNI, the path used by staload could be set as follows:

patscc -DATS JNI_targetloc='\"'${JNI}'\"' ...

In Cygwin, some extra delimiters are needed:

patscc -DATS JNI_targetloc='\\\"'${JNI}'\\\"' ...

Effectively this does the following:

#define JNI_targetloc "$PATSHOMERELOC/contrib/JNI"

Portable Code

Several example exist where a Makefile for an ATS project can generate portable C code that can later be compiled without the aid of any ATS installation:

• The most basic example.

Search paths

Paptsopt search paths, from first searched to last searched:

• the current directory of the filename being processed;
• the paths in PATHLST added by the flag -IATS;
• the paths in the ones in PREPATHLST, that is for now, ${PATSHOME} (there may be more in the future).

See “Load search path?” on ats-lang-users.