I want to sharpen my picture of the phases of scala compilation. I know that certain things have to happen in the compiler, but don't really know the order in which they happen and how the order should affect my programming.
Am I right in saying that the following things are the full list of what the compiler does?
If so, what is the order that it does these phases? How does this order affect the programmer, especially the type-level programmer?
You see the phases, their order and explanation by using scalac -Xshow-phases.
In 2.11, use -Xshow-phases -Ydebug to show both enabled and disabled phases.
Here is how it's for 2.10.0:
» scalac -Xshow-phases
phase name id description
---------- -- -----------
parser 1 parse source into ASTs, perform simple desugaring
namer 2 resolve names, attach symbols to named trees
packageobjects 3 load package objects
typer 4 the meat and potatoes: type the trees
patmat 5 translate match expressions
superaccessors 6 add super accessors in traits and nested classes
extmethods 7 add extension methods for inline classes
pickler 8 serialize symbol tables
refchecks 9 reference/override checking, translate nested objects
selectiveanf 10
selectivecps 11
uncurry 12 uncurry, translate function values to anonymous classes
tailcalls 13 replace tail calls by jumps
specialize 14 @specialized-driven class and method specialization
explicitouter 15 this refs to outer pointers, translate patterns
erasure 16 erase types, add interfaces for traits
posterasure 17 clean up erased inline classes
lazyvals 18 allocate bitmaps, translate lazy vals into lazified defs
lambdalift 19 move nested functions to top level
constructors 20 move field definitions into constructors
flatten 21 eliminate inner classes
mixin 22 mixin composition
cleanup 23 platform-specific cleanups, generate reflective calls
icode 24 generate portable intermediate code
inliner 25 optimization: do inlining
inlineExceptionHandlers 26 optimization: inline exception handlers
closelim 27 optimization: eliminate uncalled closures
dce 28 optimization: eliminate dead code
jvm 29 generate JVM bytecode
terminal 30 The last phase in the compiler chain