A brief description of the project
==================================

Sinavm is an implementation of a postfix list programming language. It was written to contrast two separate garbage collector algorithms: TwoSpace and the on-the-fly garbage collection algorithm described by Prof. E. W. Dijkstra et al.

This project can be found at http://sinavm.googlecode.com

Notes on the developer's build environment and potential portability problems
=============================================================================

This project has been built and tested on Cygwin for Windows and Mac OS X. It should also run on Debian systems (although there might be a small warning during compilation of concurrent_allocator.c - I have tried to fix this bug, bug cannot test it as I don't have access to a Debian machine at the moment).

This project requires GNU make, the GNU C Compiler, flex, bison and an implementation of the PThreads Library. You might have to alter the make file to link libraries differently on your system.

INSTALL
=======

You can't really install this project, only build it (there is no target "install" in the Makefile).

A simple make with the concurrent allocator could look like this:

% make HEAP_SIZE=4096

To really exercise the interpreter (and also execute some sina code), try:

% python testharness.py

You will want to do a "tail -f results.csv" to view the progress of the testharness. Whenever a configuration (heap size / input file size) can't be computed or in the event of a failing build, you will have to press [ENTER] to start the next configuration.

A roadmap describing important files and subdirectories
=======================================================

main.c - implements the system entry point.

testharness.py - builds the project (varying the GC and heap size) and executes the test algorithm (cesar_shift.sina)

sina_types.h - describes the main types used throughout the project.

sinavm.h - describes the interface to the Sina Virtual Machine.

sina_builtins.c - implementations of all the built in functions in the sina programming language.

Semesterarbeit_Concurrent_GC.pdf - documents the whole project and has a more complete list of the files used in this project (german).

License
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Due to restrictions on using bison, this project is under the GPL Version 2. The license can be viewed here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html.