A Progress Report on Incremental Global Compilation of Prolog

              Andreas Krall and Thomas Berger
               Institut für Computersprachen
                Technische Universität Wien
                    Argentinierstraße 8
                        A-1040 Wien
            {andi,tb}@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at

Abstract

Traditional native code generating Prolog compilers with global
analysis compile programs as a whole and do not support the data
base builtin-predicates assert and retract. In this paper we present
a scheme to both enable global analysis and incremental compilation.
This incremental compiler is based on the Vienna Abstract Machine
(VAM). A version of the VAM, the VAMai, is used as an abstract
machine for abstract interpretation. The VAMai does the data flow
analysis by a factor of two hundred faster than the previous used
meta interpreter written in Prolog. This fast execution together
with a compact representation of the intermediate code makes
incremental global compilation feasible. Preliminary results of
intermediate code size, size of generated machine code, compile time
and run time are presented.