getting-started.md

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• .NET 8 SDK

Installation

dotnet add package ObjectIR.Core

Or add to your .csproj manually:

<PackageReference Include="ObjectIR.Core" Version="0.1.0" />

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Your first module

The quickest way to build a module is with the fluent IRBuilder:

using ObjectIR.Core.Builder;
using ObjectIR.Core.IR;

// 1. Create a builder scoped to a module name
var builder = new IRBuilder("HelloWorld");

// 2. Define a class with a field and a method
builder
    .Class("Greeter")
        .Field("message", TypeReference.String)
            .Access(AccessModifier.Private)
            .EndField()
        .Method("Greet", TypeReference.Void)
            .Access(AccessModifier.Public)
            .Body()
                .Ldarg(0)                         // load 'this'
                .Ldfld(new FieldReference(
                    TypeReference.FromName("Greeter"),
                    "message",
                    TypeReference.String))        // load field
                .Ret()
            .EndBody()
        .EndMethod()
    .EndClass();

// 3. Get the finished module
Module module = builder.Build();

Console.WriteLine(module.Name);             // HelloWorld
Console.WriteLine(module.Types[0].Name);   // Greeter

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Loading from text

If you prefer a text-based format over the fluent API, ModuleLoader can parse it for you:

using ObjectIR.Core.Serialization;

var text = """
    module HelloWorld
    class Greeter {
        field message: string
        method Greet() -> void {
            ldarg 0
            ldfld Greeter.message
            ret
        }
    }
    """;

var loader = new ModuleLoader();
Module module = loader.LoadFromText(text);

See Serialization for the full text format reference.

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What to read next

Goal	Page
Understand how everything fits together	Architecture
Learn all the builder methods	Builder API
Explore the data model	IR Model
Save/load modules to disk	Serialization
Merge multiple modules	Composition