p4c is a reference compiler for the P4 programming language. It supports both P4-14 and P4-16; you can find more information about P4 in our carefully curated Documentation.

Warning
P4 Compiler's Documentation is a work in progress i.e. 🔨&🚀. This version contains mostly temporary placeholder functionality.

Overview

The P4C compiler is a compiler infrastructure for the P4 compiler designed with the following goals:

Support current and future versions of P4
Support multiple back-ends
- Generate code for ASICs, NICs, FPGAs, software switches and other targets
Provide support for other tools (debuggers, IDEs, control-plane, etc.)
Open-source front-end
Extensible architecture (easy to add new passes and optimizations)
Use modern compiler techniques (immutable IR, visitor patterns, strong type checking, etc.)
Comprehensive testing

Additional documentation

the P4_14 (P4 v1.0) language is described in the P4 spec
the P4_16 draft language specification is still under revision.
the core design of the compiler intermediate representation (IR) and the visitor patterns are briefly described in IR
The migration guide describes how P4_14 (v1.0) programs are translated into P4_16 programs