Newfus: friendly little type system which compiles to C type definitions + code

I write in C a lot (e.g. this "Spider Game"), and it's not a very friendly language for writing data structures, to say the least.
You can do it, but there's a ton of boilerplate involved, and you need good discipline in order to keep using the same patterns, or the code becomes a mess.

So, I'm trying to canonize my coding patterns and automate the writing of them!
The result is newfus, a language with a compiler which allows you to define data structures like this:

package: graphs # A binary tree is either a branch, or a leaf containing arbitrary data. union bintree: branch: struct: left: @bintree right: @bintree leaf: any

...and compile that to the following C code:

Code:

typedef struct graphs_bintree graphs_bintree_t;
typedef struct graphs_bintree_branch graphs_bintree_branch_t;

enum graphs_bintree_tag {
   GRAPHS_BINTREE_TAG_BRANCH,
   GRAPHS_BINTREE_TAG_LEAF,
   GRAPHS_BINTREE_TAGS
};

struct graphs_bintree {
   int tag; /* enum graphs_bintree_tag */
   union {
   graphs_bintree_branch_t* branch;
   any_t leaf;
   } u;
};

struct graphs_bintree_branch {
   graphs_bintree_t* left;
   graphs_bintree_t* right;
};

...along with automatically generated C functions for basic tasks like memory management, serialization, deserialization, etc. (Although currently only the code generation for memory management -- object "cleanup" -- is implemented.)

The major newfus types are:

int
bool
byte
string (i.e. const char *)
array of T (compiles to a struct with capacity, length, and pointer to array of elements, plus basic array manipulation functions)
alias (compiles to typedef)
struct
union (compiles to an enum of tags, plus a struct with tag and union)
function (compiles to function pointer)
type (compiles to const type_t *, which contains real-time type info for newfus types, including function pointers to generic methods for memory management, serialization/deserialization, etc)
any (compiles to any_t, a struct including a const type_t *type and void *data, so that the correct generic methods for mem mgmt, serialization etc can be automatically used at runtime)
extern CTYPE (compiles to a pointer-to-arbitrary-C-type, so you can refer to C types not defined in newfus)

The features are chosen to include everything I would need to move my existing C code over to this system.
For instance, my spider game's graphics engine is centered around a C struct called rendergraph_t, which forms a tree of nodes, each of which may have a cached SDL surface associated with it.
So you end up with something like this in C:

Code:

typedef struct rendergraph_bitmap {
   bool pbox_calculated;
   position_box_t pbox;
   SDL_Surface *surface;
} rendergraph_bitmap_t;

typedef struct rendergraph {
   const char *name;

   /* etc... */

   int n_bitmaps;
   struct rendergraph_bitmap *bitmaps;

   /* etc... */
} rendergraph_t;

...plus a TON of boilerplate functions.
Now I can just write this:

struct rendergraph: name: string # etc... bitmaps: array: struct rendergraph_bitmap: !extra_cleanup # Calling SDL_FreeSurface(surface) pbox_calculated: bool pbox: inplace extern: position_box_t surface: extern: SDL_Surface # etc...

...and the vast majority of the boilerplate C code is generated for me, except for freeing the SDL_Surface. For that, I've got the "!extra_cleanup" part, which causes the generated code to expect a C macro "RENDERGRAPH_BITMAP_EXTRA_CLEANUP" to be defined, and which I define in a separate .h file as "if (it->surface) SDL_FreeSurface(it->surface);" and tell the newfus compiler to #include in its generated file.

I have no idea if anyone else would be interested in such a thing, but for me it has been fun, instructive (learned a lot about C's type system...), and possibly useful!
I'm looking forward to no longer having to write a billion lines of C code around managing the memory or printing the contents of structs like this:

Code:

typedef struct rendergraph_child {
   trf_t trf;
   int frame_start;
   int frame_len;

   int type; /* enum rendergraph_child_type */
   union {
   struct {
   Uint8 color;

   /* Weakrefs */
   struct prismel *prismel;
   } prismel;
   struct {
   int frame_i;
   bool frame_i_additive;
   bool frame_i_reversed;
   int palmapper_n_applications;

   /* Weakrefs */
   struct rendergraph *rendergraph;
   struct palettemapper *palmapper;
   } rgraph;
   struct {
   const char *name;
   } label;
   } u;
} rendergraph_child_t;

typedef struct rendergraph {
   /* etc... */

   ARRAY_DECL(rendergraph_child_t, children)

   /* etc... */
} rendergraph_t;

...instead just writing a single definition like this:

struct rendergraph: # etc... children: array: struct rendergraph_child: trf: inplace @trf frame_start: int frame_len: int type: union: prismel: struct: color: extern: Uint8 prismel: weakref @prismel rgraph: struct: frame_i: int frame_i_additive: bool frame_i_reversed: bool palmapper_n_applications: int rendergraph: weakref @rendergraph palmapper: weakref @palettemapper label: struct: name: string # etc...

For comparison, here is rendergraph.h + rendergraph.c, versus geom.fus (of whose 166 lines the entire rendergraph struct takes up about 60).