Gerl - A free Erlang

Gerl (Geoff's Erlang) is a GNU GPL'ed free compiler which implements a (large) subset of the current Erlang standard. Gerl provides native compilation using C as an intermediate language. The intermediate output, while not elegant, is amenable to being ported away from the Erlang environment and into more `traditional' C based development environments.

The compiler also provides a number of special features. These features include support for a concurrent monitoring system and simple static type analysis. Each Erlang module is compiled as a native shared object library to support dynamic code loading and unloading. In contrast to the standard Erlang implementation the runtime system is tightly integrated into the Unix environment. Erlang processes are instantiated as actual Unix processes at runtime. This allows Unix system analysis and monitoring tools to be used upon individual Erlang processes.

Overall this compiler offers linear some computational performance improvements over standard Erlang systems while producing a portable re-usable intermediate C code. Here are some random (and useful?) links:

• Click here to download the current source for Gerl (Technical Report SERC - 0079).
• Click here to download a paper discussing compilation issues for Gerl.
• The standard Erlang homepage
• Open Source Erlang
• ETOS Erlang compiler