CrossForth

CrossForth is a cross-platform Forth-based programming language and toolchain designed to simplify writing portable software for multiple processor architectures and operating systems. The project aims to reduce the effort required to develop and deploy Forth applications across embedded and desktop targets, providing a cohesive flow from source to runnable code.

The language preserves the stack-based, extensible word model characteristic of Forth. CrossForth defines a core set of target-agnostic primitives and offers mechanisms to define host-independent words that can be mapped to different backends. The design emphasizes a minimal runtime and predictable behavior, while supplying extensions to handle cross-target concerns such as endianness, word size, and input/output semantics.

The toolchain typically includes a source compiler or assembler, one or more backends for common architectures, and a runtime library with essential primitives. A build system coordinates cross-compilation, object generation, and linking for the selected target. Some implementations support both direct-threaded and indirect-threaded execution models, enabling performant code on resource-constrained devices.

Documentation and community resources often describe how to port existing Forth code by abstracting hardware-specific details behind portable interfaces. CrossForth is commonly used in education, research, and hobbyist projects related to embedded systems, robotics, and retro-computing.

See also: Forth, cross-compilation, embedded systems, portable programming languages.