mini

mini is a "complete" Forth-like language / command interpreter hosted by a single 4096-byte Windows executable. New primitive words can be defined circuitously through assemble_byte and ffi (the internal import table, which also contains GetModuleHandleA and GetProcAddress), and everything else is achievable through its minimalist memory management and assembly mode. See Thinking Forth or Threaded Interpretive Languages for context. init.mini is run on startup and can be used to define your own programs.

Build Instructions

You will need NASM 2.16.01 and NMAKE and LINK as provided with Visual Studio. Run nmake to build mini.exe and nmake report to generate a digest of all defined functions ("instructions") in mini.asm, which is written to report.md.

Meta-compilation

I have a plan:

• mini.exe will be the exceedingly tiny kernel used for bootstrapping by a full, self-hosted Forth/TIL meta-compiler.
  • But let's keep compression around purely for the satisfaction and the reference implementation.
• This meta-compiler will be retargeted for UEFI to make a classic block-based multitasking, persistent environment, on which much further work can be done.
• LISP and Smalltalk implementations will follow, hopefully self-hosting and image-based.