ace-forth cross-compiler

ace-forth is a Forth cross-compiler for Jupiter Ace by Petri Häkkinen. The main benefit of cross-compiling is that it allows editing the source code on host PC and compiling it to TAP file to be executed on a real Jupiter Ace or emulator.

Petri is constantly improving, developing and updating the code to ace-forth cross-compiler you can download if from his github page https://github.com/petrihakkinen/ace-forth.

Features:

Compiles to Jupiter Ace compatible interpreted Forth bytecode (compact size) or Z80 machine code (speed!)

Supports most standard Forth words + many non-standard extras

Optimizations such as inlining, dead code elimination, tail-calls, byte-size literals, short branches...

Macros (immediate words executed at compile time)

Generates a TAP file which can be loaded into emulator or real Jupiter Ace

Prerequisites

You need a Lua 5.4 interpreter executable, which can be obtained from http://www.lua.org/download.html

Precompiled Lua binaries for many platforms are also available: http://luabinaries.sourceforge.net/

A precompiled executable for macOS comes with the compiler in the 'tools' directory.

If you are a Sublime Text user, you might also want to install the following Forth syntax plugin with ace-forth support: https://github.com/petrihakkinen/sublime-forth