The original compiler was written in Ruby, and CoffeeScript started out life as a Ruby gem. Once the language reached a reasonable stage of completion, we ported it over to CoffeeScript and axed the Ruby version.
Now, every time that you run "bin/cake build", you re-write your entire compiler.
It's pretty fun stuff -- if you're working on the language and you break something, guess what, you no longer have a working compiler to dig yourself out with.
So the usual pattern for language work (bin/cake build:full), is to check out the "lib" directory (in case you broke it), rebuild the compiler twice, to get your modifications built-in, and then to run all of the tests.
Though I appreciate the code, and will definitely read through it, and I like the idea of a self-compiled language... that seems like more hassle than it's worth (very specifically the double-compilation / failed => super.fail part. A compiler in the language it compiles has advantages for the programmers using it, among other things).
Now, every time that you run "bin/cake build", you re-write your entire compiler.
It's pretty fun stuff -- if you're working on the language and you break something, guess what, you no longer have a working compiler to dig yourself out with.
So the usual pattern for language work (bin/cake build:full), is to check out the "lib" directory (in case you broke it), rebuild the compiler twice, to get your modifications built-in, and then to run all of the tests.