4.5.2 Code Generation Compiler Back-End

The code generation back-end is provided by the (rpc compiler) module. Given an XDR/RPC description, it returns a list of S-expressions, each of which is a top-level Scheme expression implementing an element of the input description. These expressions are meant to be dumped to a Scheme file; this is what the command-line interface of the compiler does (see grpc-compile).

Here is an example XDR/RPC description and the resulting client code, as obtained, e.g., with grpc-compile --xdr --constants --client:

     const max = 010;
     
     struct foo
     {
       int   x;
       float y<max>;
     };
     
     =>
     
     (define max 8)
     (define foo
       (make-xdr-struct-type
         (list xdr-integer
               (make-xdr-vector-type xdr-float max))))

As can be seen here, the generated code uses the run-time support routines described earlier (see Implementation of XDR); an optimization would consist in generating specialized code that does not depend on the run-time support, but it is not implemented yet.

This front-end consists of two procedures: