Understanding the Go Compiler

Understanding the Go Compiler

5 articles in this series •

Posts

  1. 1

    The Scanner

    • 10 min read

    This is part of a series where I’ll walk you through the entire Go compiler, covering each phase from source code to executable. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you run go build, …

  2. 2

    The Parser

    • 18 min read

    In the previous blog post, we explored the scanner—the component that converts your source code from a stream of characters into a stream of tokens.

    Now we’re ready for the next step: the parser …

  3. 3

    The Type Checker

    • 13 min read

    In the previous posts, we explored the scanner—which converts source code into tokens—and the parser—which takes those tokens and builds an Abstract Syntax Tree.

    In future posts, I’ll cover the …

  4. 4

    The Unified IR Format

    • 11 min read

    In the previous post, we explored how the Go compiler’s type checker analyzes your code. We saw how it resolves identifiers, checks type compatibility, and ensures your program is semantically …

  5. 5

    The IR

    • 18 min read

    In the previous posts, we’ve explored how the Go compiler processes your code: the scanner breaks it into tokens, the parser builds an Abstract Syntax Tree, the type checker validates …