The Esterel v5 21 System Manual - Courses

Chapter 2
Using the Esterel Compiler
This chapter presents the compiler structure in a detailed way. Its reading
is useful for making the best usage of it.
2.1 The Esterel v5 21 Compiler Structure
The Esterel v5 21 compiler is made out of several internal processors controlled
by a single esterel command. Normally, the user should only call
this command and should never call directly the internal processors. However,
it is important to know the names and functions of the processors.
For this, it is necessary to understand what are the source and intermediate
codes handled by the compiler and the associated file suffixes.
strl A file foo.strl contains source Esterel code. It can contain several
modules.
ic A file foo.ic contains intermediate Esterel code. A file foo.ic is
obtained from a file foo.strl by running the strlic processor.
Each source module produces an intermediate code module, which
starts by a set of tables and continues by a set of statements
written in an imperative parallel kernel code roughly equivalent
to the kernel Esterel calculus [1] but presented in a graph form,
which is more efficient for compilation purposes. The strlic
processor type-checks the source code and generates the ic code
only if no errors are found.
If a source module contains calls to other modules, the same calls
appear in the ic code. The iclc processor resolves open calls
and links together several ic modules by recursively expanding
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