Heraclitus

Warning

As of 22.09.2026 this repository will not be updated in crates.io due to the increased maintenance effort. This library will still be maintained and can be used from this repository.

Heraclitus is an open source compiler frontend written in rust. It's used as a basis for Amber programming language.

Heraclitus - the compiler frontend

With heraclitus you can create your language by skipping the cumbersome lexing step and using convenience parsing methods that can get you started on your language much quicker.

The main construct that you need is the Compiler. The compiler will tokenize your code and assemble it in a way that you can use to create AST by implementing predefined trait that helps you parse your code.

It's pretty simple. In order to get started you need 3 steps:

1. Create lexing rules
2. Create your ast nodes and let them implement trait provided by this package
3. Create compiler and tie all the components together

Voilá! 🎉

Now you got yourself a ready to analyze / interpret / validate / compile AST.

Ready to get started?

Example

use heraclitus::prelude::*;
Compiler::new("HerbScript", rules);

It is recommended to use included prelude to import just the things we will actually need.

The Compiler requires lexer rules in order to exist.

let cc = Compiler::new("HerbScript", rules);
let tokens = cc.tokenize()?;