# 🧅 Onion Frontend
The compilation frontend for the Onion programming language. This package handles lexical analysis, parsing, semantic analysis, and intermediate representation generation.
## 📚 Overview
The `onion-frontend` package is responsible for transforming Onion source code into intermediate representation (IR) that can be executed by the Onion Virtual Machine. It implements a complete compilation pipeline from source text to executable bytecode.
## 🏗️ Architecture
```
Source Code → Lexer → Parser → AST -> Comptime → Analyzer → IR Generator → IR/Bytecode
```
### Components
- **Lexer** (`parser/lexer.rs`) - Tokenizes source code into a stream of tokens
- **Parser** (`parser/ast.rs`) - Builds Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) from tokens
- **Analyzer** (`parser/analyzer.rs`) - Performs semantic analysis and error checking
- **IR Generator** (`ir_generator/`) - Generates intermediate representation from AST
- **Compiler** (`compile.rs`) - Orchestrates the entire compilation process
## ✨ Features
- 🔍 **Lexical Analysis** - Complete tokenization with support for Unicode
- 🌳 **AST Generation** - Builds structured representation of source code
- 🔎 **Semantic Analysis** - Type checking and error detection
- 📦 **IR Generation** - Produces optimized intermediate representation
- 🚀 **Bytecode Compilation** - Generates executable bytecode for the VM
- 🔧 **Error Reporting** - Rich error messages with source location information
## 🏗️ Module Structure
```
onion-frontend/
├── src/
│ ├── lib.rs # Public API exports
│ ├── compile.rs # Main compilation orchestration
│ ├── parser/ # Lexical and syntactic analysis
│ │ ├── comptime/ # Compile-time evaluation and solving
│ │ ├── mod.rs
│ │ ├── lexer.rs # Tokenization
│ │ ├── ast.rs # AST construction
│ │ └── analyzer.rs # Semantic analysis
│ └── ir_generator/ # Intermediate representation
│ ├── mod.rs
│ └── ir_generator.rs # IR generation logic
└── Cargo.toml
```
## 🎯 Design Goals
1. **Correctness** - Comprehensive error checking and validation
2. **Performance** - Efficient compilation with minimal overhead
3. **Extensibility** - Modular design for easy feature additions
4. **Developer Experience** - Clear error messages and debugging support
## 🤝 Integration
This package is designed to work seamlessly with:
- **onion-vm** - Executes the generated bytecode
- **Language Server** - Provides IDE support through compilation services
- **CLI Tools** - Powers the `onion compile` command
## 📄 License
This package is part of the Onion programming language project and is licensed under the MIT License.