6. Conclusions

This paper presents techniques for generating native code for persistent programming languages. C is used as a compiler target language resulting in a portable and efficient code generation technique whose performance approaches that of equivalent C programs. The full functionality of a strongly typed persistent object store is freely available without the undesirable aspects of programming in C. The code generation techniques presented permit:

• the co-existence of interpreted and native code,
• code to be mapped onto relocatable persistent objects,
• linked to the necessary run-time support and other generated code,
• the use of compacting garbage collectors,
• the run-time compilation and execution of dynamically generated source, and
• the preservation of dynamic state over system snapshots.

We have recently re-implemented the code generator's C macros to abstract over address sizes. This enhanced portability permits the code generation technology to be employed on the latest 64 bit RISC architectures such as the DEC Alpha [15]. We expect to have a robust native code generator running on an Alpha platform by the time this paper is published.