By
TheDcoder
Hello everyone, it has been a while since I have been involved in a serious AutoIt-related project discussion in the forums here, so it feels good to be back at it
First a little backstory, a few months back (or a year ago) I made the switch to Linux from Windows... there were several reasons as to why I was motivated to do it, but the main things was Windows 10 was getting out of hand, it didn't offer enough freedom out of the box (restrictive settings, greedy defaults etc.) and had several issues with all kinds of software, many of them mysteriously hard to fix.
I did have Linux installed as my secondary operating system for few years at that point and I began to see me regularly use it more than Windows, so one day I went ahead and said "fork it", I have stuck to Linux from that point on as my primary operating system.
Windows is still installed in my computer and I also have a virtual machine with the latest version of Windows 10 on it, primarily because I still use Windows to write software using AutoIt as part of my job (freelance).
I was pretty sad about the fact that I could no longer use AutoIt to make stuff for myself (since it doesn't run on Linux), I missed sharing code with the community here, this was a great hobby for me as AutoIt is what got me start with programming (even though I had tried several times to get into other languages before, those attempts were never as successful as what I have done in AutoIt).
In Linux there is no language which is similar to AutoIt unfortunately, there are a few things which come close but are not on par with AutoIt's ease of use. As some of you may know, I have recently started working on other projects using the C language, it is a great step I have taken and I am learning a lot... but it is still not easy to create quick scripts or programs in C, due to the amount of configuration and dedication it takes to make a C program, also it is not ideal for sharing as multiple source files are involved. And on top of that you still have to deal with platform-specific APIs since C is a low-level language.
(Getting back to core of this topic's subject)
To solve this issue and to sharpen my programming skills, I could start working on an alternate cross-platform implementation of the AutoIt language which should be backwards compatible with the current AutoIt v3 on C
The primary aim in the beginning is to implement all the basic functions (File, String, Numbers etc.) in AutoIt so that it is possible to make basic and fundamental scripts which would work in both Windows and Linux
The main features would be:
Cross-platform (Linux and Windows with the possibility supporting of Mac)
Backward compatible with AutoIt 3
Byte-code based interpreter instead of source interpreter
Easy to use (just like the current AutoIt)
The advantage of having a byte-code based interpreter is that it makes the interpreter lighter and faster since it doesn't have to deal with parsing the source code, this would also open the door for some compile time optimizations... another bonus thing for those who don't like their source code present inside the compiler binaries is that it should be impossible to get hands on the original source code, this of course does not mean that decompilation can be stopped... it merely means that anyone decompiling would have to reconstruct the code from the byte-code.
We can later on implement GUI related functions and maybe even automation related functions if the project gets enough traction
I am adding a poll to keep track of people who are willing to invest in this project or would like to see it come into existence. Welcome any comments, suggestions etc.
Obviously I will have a lot to learn and my work might interfere with this at times, but with enough interest I can see myself working on this to deliver a very basic prototype which could be used with basic scripts.
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