ballerina-lang-go

Goals

The primary goal of this effort is to come up with a native Ballerina compiler frontend that is fast, memory-efficient and has a fast startup. Eventually it could replace the current jBallerina compiler frontend.

Implementation plan

The implementation strategy involves a one-to-one mapping of the jBallerina compiler.

Usage

Dependencies

The project is built using the Go programming language. The following dependencies are required:

• Go 1.24 or later

Build the CLI

Production Build (default)

go build -o bal ./cli/cmd

Debug Build

go build -tags debug -o bal-debug ./cli/cmd

Using Profiling

Profiling is only available in debug builds (compiled with -tags debug).

Enable Profiling

# Default profiling port (:6060)
./bal-debug run --prof corpus/bal/subset1/01-boolean/equal1-v.bal

# Custom port
./bal-debug run --prof --prof-addr=:8080 corpus/bal/subset1/01-boolean/equal1-v.bal

Access Profiling Data

• Web UI: http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/
• CPU Profile: http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30
• Heap Profile: http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/heap
• Goroutines: http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/goroutine

Analyze with pprof Tool

# CPU profiling (30 second sample)
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30

# Heap profiling
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/heap

# Interactive web UI
go tool pprof -http=:8081 http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30

Using the CLI

CLI Help

./bal --help

./bal run --help

Running a bal source

Currently, the following are supported:

• Single .bal file
• Ballerina package with only the default module

E.g

./bal run --dump-bir corpus/bal/subset1/01-boolean/equal1-v.bal
./bal run project-api-test/testdata/myproject

Testing

To run the tests, use the following command:

go test ./...