Languages

Languages in Storm are identified by the file extensions of the files containing the language. When Storm tries to load the contents of a package, it examines the different file extensions present and creates an instance of the core.lang.PkgReader class for each of the files. This is done by calling the function lang.<ext>.reader(core.Array<core.io.Url>, core.lang.Package), which is expected to create a reader which can be used to read the files provided into the package provided. When all Readers are created, Storm asks each of them to load various parts of the language. This is to allow the different languages to find types declared in the same package but inside a different language.

Because of this, it is quite easy to create a new language. Simply create a new package named lang.a, and Storm will load .a-files using your newly created Reader.

Loading

Code is loaded in the following steps:

  1. load syntax rules
  2. load syntax options
  3. load types
  4. finalize types
  5. load functions

Step 4 is used to set up inheritance for types and other tasks that requires information about other types present in the same package.

Each Reader is handed a set of all files of the same type that are found, since some files may depend on each other. However, in the case that no files overlap, Storm provides an implementation of Reader that is based on individual files instead of a set of files. To use it, simply inherit your Reader from core.lang.FilesReader, and implement the createFile member to create a core.lang.FileReader instance for each file. The FilesReader will then take care of forwarding calls for the loading progress to all FileReaders.