The Kipper programming language - kipper 🦊✨

Kipper is a JavaScript-like strongly and strictly typed language with Python flavour. It aims to provide straightforward, simple, secure and type-safe coding with better efficiency and developer satisfaction!

It compiles to both JavaScript and TypeScript, and can be set up in your terminal, Node.js or ES6+ browser. 🦊💻

For more details, you can read more about this project in the sections "Goals & Planned Features" and "Why Kipper?".

General Information

• Website: https://kipper-lang.org
• Docs: https://docs.kipper-lang.org
• Playground: https://play.kipper-lang.org
• Issue Tracker: https://issues.kipper-lang.org
• Roadmap: View Kipper Roadmap 🦊🚧
• Changelog: View CHANGELOG.md

Installation

To install the whole Kipper package with its CLI, run the following command:

npm i kipper

If you are using pnpm or yarn, use pnpm i kipper or yarn add kipper.

Project Packages

• kipper: The Kipper compiler and API, which ships with all child packages.
• @kipper/core: The core implementation of the Kipper compiler.
• @kipper/cli: The Kipper command line interface (CLI).
• @kipper/web: The standalone web-module for the Kipper compiler.
• @kipper/target-js: The JavaScript target for the Kipper compiler.
• @kipper/target-ts: The TypeScript target for the Kipper compiler.

Goals & Planned Features

View the current implementation state in the Kipper Roadmap 🦊🚧.

• Full compiler ensured type safety, by analysing and reporting code during compilation.
• Duck typing type checking with TypeScript-like interface types for both compile and runtime.
• Runtime type and type checking features, where original compile time type issues can be resolved during runtime.
• Strict cast and conversion handling, so that potentially or definitely problematic usage is detected by the compiler and ensures the developer has to handle them.
• Avoidance of any type issues, with ensurance of compiler checks that operations and data access are valid.
• Runtime errors and safety checks in case of incomplete or faulty typing. This should avoid issues, such as "TypeError: can't access property "..." of undefined".
• Null safety, by enforcing non-null types unless explicitly allowed.
• Conversion behaviour functions in classes to customise conversion behaviour.
• Operator overloading and additional customisation behaviour.
• Type Conversion Overloading to customise conversion behaviour.
• Full translation to/and integration with JavaScript and TypeScript.
• Import Support for .ts files, as well as .d.ts + .js files.
• Translation support for all ES versions as far as ES6 (JavaScript target specific)

How to use Kipper?

To use Kipper you have three options:

• Run it in the browser using the CDN kipper-standalone.min.js file, which bundles the entire compiler for your browser.
• Run it using the NodeJS CLI @kipper/cli.
• Import the package @kipper/core in NodeJS or Deno.

In a browser with @kipper/web 🦊🌐

For running Kipper in the browser, you will have to include the kipper-standalone.js file, which provides the Kipper Compiler for the browser and enables the compilation of Kipper code to JavaScript.

Simple example of compiling and running Kipper code in a browser:

<!-- Kipper dependency -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@kipper/web@latest/kipper-standalone.min.js"></script>

<!-- You won't have to define Kipper or anything after including the previous file. It will be defined per default  -->
<!-- with the global 'Kipper' -->
<script type="module">
	// Define your own logger and compiler, which will handle the compilation
	const logger = new Kipper.KipperLogger((level, msg) => {
		console.log(`[${Kipper.getLogLevelString(level)}] ${msg}`);
	});
	// Define your own compiler with your wanted configuration
	const compiler = new Kipper.KipperCompiler(logger);

	// Compile the code to JavaScript
	// Top-level await ref: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/await#top_level_await
	const result = await compiler.compile(`call print("Hello world!");`, {
		target: new KipperJS.TargetJS(),
	});
	const jsCode = result.write();

	// Finally, run your program
	eval(jsCode);
</script>

Locally using Node.js with @kipper/cli 🦊🖥️

This is to recommend way to use Kipper if you want to dive deeper into Kipper, as it allows you to locally use and run kipper, without depending on a browser.

For example:

• Compiling a Kipper program:

  kipper compile file.kip

• Executing a Kipper program using Node.js:

  kipper run file.kip

This also enables the usage of Kipper files with the .kip extension, which can be read and compiled to TypeScript, without having to configure anything yourself. This also allows the input of data over the console and file-interactions, which are not supported inside a browser.

For more info go to the @kipper/cli README.

Locally in your own code with @kipper/core 🦊⌨️

This is the recommended way if you intend to use kipper in a workflow or write code yourself to manage the compiler. This also allows for special handling of logging and customising the compilation process.

Simple example of using the Kipper Compiler in Node.js:

• JavaScript (CommonJS):

  const fs = require("fs").promises;
  const kipper = require("@kipper/core");
  const kipperJS = require("@kipper/target-js");
  
  const path = "INSERT_PATH";
  fs.readFile(path, "utf8").then(async (fileContent) => {
  	const compiler = new kipper.KipperCompiler();
  
  	// Compile the code string or stream
  	let result = await compiler.compile(fileContent, { target: new kipperJS.TargetJS() });
  	let jsCode = result.write();
  
  	// Running the Kipper program
  	eval(jsCode);
  });

• TypeScript (CommonJS):

  import { promises as fs } from "fs";
  import { KipperCompiler } from "@kipper/core";
  import { TargetJS } from "@kipper/target-js";
  
  const path = "INSERT_PATH";
  fs.readFile(path, "utf8" as BufferEncoding).then(async (fileContent: string) => {
  	const compiler = new KipperCompiler();
  
  	// Compile the code string or stream
  	let result = await compiler.compile(fileContent, { target: new TargetJS() });
  	let jsCode = result.write();
  
  	// Running the Kipper program
  	eval(jsCode);
  });

Why Kipper? 🦊❓

Skip this section, if you are not interested in the details behind Kipper and this project. It is not required knowledge for using or trying out Kipper.

The primary use case and reason for the development of Kipper is the simplification of the development process for developers, both in the web and server-side space, by improving on common issues and helping developers fix them more easily and quickly.

Therefore this programming language, like TypeScript, aims to provide more safety and functionality using a compiler and pre-runtime error checking. This primarily also utilises type checking, as a way to ensure that programs work as intended and that developers can discover errors before they run their code.

TypeScript already does a great job at this, so why is Kipper needed or how does it do things differently? TypeScript is an amazing language, which is why Kipper has many of its designs and features similarly implemented. Though a big issue that TypeScript can't detect is and properly resolve is the issue of inconsistent or incomplete typing. This is a huge issue when working with dynamic data or JavaScript code, where types are unknown or can't be known before runtime, since due to the compile time typing of TypeScript type checking often is not able to detect issues and many will simply bypass error checks altogether. Even with instanceof and typeof checks, it becomes a tedious effort that often results in more errors, due to issues arising while trying to fix the original problems.

Kipper therefore tries to implement a way to easily solve those issues in a standardised way, by allowing for more complex runtime type checks and runtime error handling. This means Kipper will still be there to assist the developer during runtime, by handling many cases where type issues could arise. This also means functionality like casts or conversions are more strictly handled and don't overwrite type checking behaviour. Even so though, Kipper will always try to not be invasive, and developers can choose during development time how to handle different cases and how Kipper should handle them during runtime.

Contributing to Kipper

If you want to contribute to Kipper, we have a full guide explaining the structure of Kipper and how to use GitHub issues and pull requests. Check it out here!

If you have any questions or concerns, you can open up a discussion page here!

We appreciate any feedback or help! Kipper is open-source and free for anyone, help us make it even better! 🦊❤️

Copyright and License

Copyright (C) 2021-2023 Luna Klatzer

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

See the LICENSE for information on terms & conditions for usage.

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