This is a forth system based on a VM-architecture. The bytecode interpreter can be compiled in Windows and in Linux with a simple ANSI C compiler. The system in designed to be simple and solid. The system can be compiled under 32 or 64 bit systems.

The system has primitives to call external code, which must be located in a external shared library. You can also add additional primitives.

You can save the system state in a "dump" which can be translated to a C file and then linked to the runtime to generate a turnkey application.

Under Linux use the shell script compile.sh and under Windows you can use compile.bat. If you want to compile a 64 bit Forth you should use the compile_64.bat or compile_64.sh script.

You will find a forthconsole executable which is a Forth REPL that you can use to develop in a interactive way.

With the script do_images.bat you can generate a Forth REPL that includes the full kernel.

Under the examples directory you can find some example of what you can do with this Forth system.

There is a minimal editor support for editing Forth files under Emacs under the emacs directory.

To generate turnkey applications you must:

Load your application in the interactive environment and create a main word that will be called by the application.

C> forth
4Forth 0.1 (06/2009)
Code Space: 2434
Data Space: 23489
----
 
kernel full.4th
 
 
4> : main ." turnkey application example!" cr ;
 ok

Generate a forth image (forth.image) with the word saveimage:

4> saveimage
 ok
4>  

Execute forthc that will embed your image in a C file and will compile that file with the forth runtime:

C> forthc forth.image myexample
genero: myexample.c
eseguo: gcc -o myexample -DOS_WINDOWS myexample.c -L. -l4th
eseguo: strip -s myexample.exe

C> dir myexample.exe
23/08/12  15.29           128.014 myexample.exe

You are ready to run:

C> myexample.exe
turnkey application example!

As you see a turnkey application with all the forth libraries and the VM is something like 128K, which is not terribly big in this days.

Copyright (c) 2012, Leonardo Cecchi All rights reserved.

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