Clover — LLVM-backed Compiler

Clover is a C-like language, performs semantic analysis, and emits LLVM IR. (I am trying to keep it low level and thinking of making it performance oriented)

Current functionality

• Lexer, parser, and AST construction
• Semantic analysis (type checking, basic symbol resolution)
• LLVM IR code generation (prints module IR to stdout)
• Supported features:
  • Built-in integer and floating types, casts
  • const bindings (immutability enforced by semantic pass)
  • struct declarations and field access
  • extern declarations to call C functions
  • Control flow: if / elif / else, do (do-while), loop, break, continue
  • Pointers, address-of (&) and deref (*) inside unsafe contexts
  • Arithmetic and bitwise operators
  • Basic testing via lli or by producing object files and linking with clang

Repository layout

• CMakeLists.txt — build configuration (uses CMake + LLVM)
• include/ — public headers (AST, lexer, parser, sem, codegen)
• src/ — implementation (frontend + codegen)
• test/ — example programs (e.g., test/test.clv)

Build

Configure and build with CMake. Example:

# If `llvm-config --cmakedir` is non-empty, pass it as `LLVM_DIR`.
cmake -S . -B build -DLLVM_DIR=$(llvm-config --cmakedir) -DLLVM_LINK_LLVM_DYLIB=ON
cmake --build build -j

Usage

Using extern to call C functions

extern i32 puts(s : *char);

i32 main() {
	puts("Hello, Clover!");
	ret 0;
}

const bindings

Example:

const PI : f64 = 3.14159;

i32 main() {
	x : f32 = PI as f32;
	ret 0;
}

Struct definition

struct vec {
    a : f32,
    b : f32
}

---