Whale command reference

Build Whale

From the Whale repository:

cargo build --release

The command-line workflow provides assembly, object construction, and an optional IR interface:

whale asm --amd64 <input> -o <output>
whale object <input> -o <output>
whale ir <subcommand> [options]

AMD64 assembler

whale asm --amd64 input.asm -o output.o

The AMD64 assembler writes an ELF64 relocatable .o file containing the assembled sections, symbols, and relocations represented by the input.

Developer inspection begins with --debug-whale:

whale asm --amd64 input.asm -o output.o \
  --debug-whale --token --ast --bytes --dump-hex --stats

Available inspection flags include --token, --ast, --bytes, --dump-hex, --dump-bin, --dump-json, and --stats. --trace prints pipeline progress.

Object wrapper

whale object input.bin -o output.o

object reads raw bytes, places them in an ELF64 .text section, and adds a global start symbol at offset zero. Use the target platform's linker when an executable is required.

Optional IR socket

The ir command is compiled only with Whale's socket-cli feature:

cargo run -p whale --features socket-cli -- ir lower program.json
cargo run -p whale --features socket-cli -- ir lower program.json -o program.wir

ir lower reads socket JSON matching the Whale frontend schema, converts it to Whale IR, verifies the module by default, and writes textual IR to stdout or -o. --target <triple> selects the target string and --no-verify skips verification.

Without socket-cli, whale ir exits with an error that explains how to rebuild it. Socket JSON is versioned internal interchange; producers must match the socket version used by the Whale build.