[Grace-core] Minigrace, a prototype compiler for Grace

[Michael Homer]

Minigrace is a compiler for Grace, supporting most of the language
specified so far and itself written in Grace. It compiles to native
code via C and to JavaScript that runs in a web browser.

Minigrace is distributed as downloadable tarballs [1] that require
only a C compiler to build, or via `git clone
git://github.com/mwh/minigrace.git` [2]. The git repository knows how
to bootstrap itself by compiling the Grace source code. Documentation
is included inside the source tree, including a description of
unimplemented or additional features versus the specification. The
test suite also provides an overview of implemented functionality.

The compiler should work on any POSIX-compatible system with GCC, and
is known to work on Linux, NetBSD, and Mac OS X. There is also a
client-side web front end [3] suitable for quick experimentation that
should work in any modern web browser with JavaScript enabled.

Once built, the most important Minigrace command line is:
    ./minigrace --run file.grace
which will compile and execute the given file. Other options are
described in the documentation.

There is a Minigrace mailing list [4] for discussing issues relating
to the implementation. Release and update announcements will be sent
to that list.

[1] http://ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~mwh/minigrace/dist/
[2] https://github.com/mwh/minigrace
[3] http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~mwh/minigrace/js/
[4] http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/minigrace
-Michael