Alice

Alice is a native-oriented language bootstrap focused on a friendly end-block syntax, static types, ownership inference, and a verified ownership MIR.

Current executable boundary

The Crystal compiler implements the architecture through M2:

• newline-aware lexer and recovery-oriented recursive-descent/Pratt parser;
• AST for functions, sum types, expressions, patterns, blocks, calls, and if/match;
• module-local names, basic type checking, declaration checks, and closed-variant match diagnostics;
• frozen inferred parameter modes (BorrowRead and Move in this slice);
• public .ali interfaces containing canonical exported signatures, ownership modes, and SHA-256 digests;
• explicit ownership MIR with moves, borrows, calls, drops, cleanup-relevant local state, returns, and bounds-check representation;
• independent MIR verification of moved/dropped values and aliasing conflicts.

The stable backend boundary is documented in architecture/07-stable-mir.md. Before LLVM begins, the repository also provides deterministic local package resolution/.alb bundles, the portable C embedding ABI, actor-send ownership enforcement, and lifecycle-safe C/JNI/CPython/BEAM bridge foundations.

Run

crystal spec
crystal run src/alice.cr -- check path/to/program.alice
crystal run src/alice.cr -- mir path/to/program.alice
crystal run src/alice.cr -- resolve .
crystal run src/alice.cr -- bundle . compiler.alb
./scripts/verify_pre_llvm.sh

The compiler exits non-zero and emits labelled stable diagnostics when parsing, typing, or MIR verification fails.