Amsterdam Compiler Kit

Amsterdam Compiler Kit

Developer(s)	Andrew Tanenbaum and Ceriel Jacobs
Stable release	6.0pre3 / April 29, 2007
Written in	C
Operating system	Minix and Unix-like
Type	Retargetable compiler
License	BSD licenses
Website	http://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 a BSD open source license. It has frontends for C, Pascal, Modula-2, Occam, and BASIC.

The ACK achieves maximum portability by using an intermediate byte-code language called EM. Each language front-end produces EM object files, which are then processed through a number of 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. (You cannot, however, link EM code to native machine code without translating the EM binary first.)

Target processors

• 6500
• 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

See also

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

External links

• official home page
• Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK) information sheet