Open Networking Foundation – p4c

p4c is a reference compiler for the P4 programming language.

p4c is modular; it provides a standard frontend and midend which can be combined with a target-specific backend to create a complete P4 compiler. The goal is to make adding new backends easy. The code contains five sample backends:

• p4c-bm2-ss: can be used to target the P4 simple_switch written using the BMv2 behavioral model,
• p4c-dpdk: can be used to target the DPDK software switch (SXS) pipeline
• p4c-ebpf: can be used to generate C code which can be compiled to eBPF and then loaded in the Linux kernel for packet filtering,
• p4test: a source-to-source P4 translator which can be used for testing, learning compiler internals and debugging,
• p4c-graphs: can be used to generate visual representations of a P4 program; for now it only supports generating graphs of top-level control flows, and
• p4c-ubfp: can be used to generate eBPF code that runs in user-space.

One fact attesting to the level of quality and completeness of p4c’s code is that its front-end code, mid-end code, and p4c-graphs back end are used as the basis for at least one commercially supported P4 compiler.

For more information, visit the p4c repository.