Getting Started

This guide walks you through the steps needed to get the Alan compiler and VM on your local machine. You can also:

Installation

For users on Windows, MacOS, and Ubuntu Linux with x86-64 processors, you can download the Alan executable, extract it into your $PATH/%PATH% (eg /usr/local/bin on MacOS and Ubuntu, and C:\Windows on Windows if you don't want to add a new executable path to your environment variable), and you're ready to go!

For Linux:

wget https://github.com/alantech/alan/releases/download/latest/alan-ubuntu.tar.gz
tar -xzf alan-ubuntu.tar.gz
sudo mv alan /usr/local/bin/alan

For MacOS:

curl -OL https://github.com/alantech/alan/releases/download/latest/alan-macos.tar.gz
tar -xzf alan-macos.tar.gz
# sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin if the folder does not exist
sudo mv alan /usr/local/bin/alan

For Windows:

Invoke-WebRequest -OutFile alan-windows.zip -Uri https://github.com/alantech/alan/releases/download/latest/alan-windows.zip
Expand-Archive -Path alan-windows.zip -DestinationPath C:\windows

Source Installation

If you wish to contribute to Alan, or if your operating system and/or CPU architecture do not match the above, you'll need a development environment to build Alan locally:

  • git (any recent version should work)
  • Node.js >=10.20.1
  • Rust >=1.45.0
  • A complete C toolchain (gcc, clang, msvc)

Once those are installed, simply:

git clone https://github.com/alantech/alan
cd alan
make
sudo make install

Writing a Hello, World! Example

After installation, first create a file named hello_world.ln and then write the following within it:

import @std/app

on app.start {
  app.print("Hello, World!");
  emit app.exit 0;
}

Now compile the code to produce an AGC binary and then run it which prints Hello, World!:

alan compile hello_world.ln hello_world.agc
alan run hello_world.agc

If your binary output size is very large and you don't mind the slight increase in startup time, you can also compile to AGZ for a gzipped version of the binary that can also be run directly:

alan compile hello_world.ln hello_world.agz
alan run hello_world.agz

You can also run the source file directly:

alan hello_world.ln

which will internally compile the code then run it, but you have to pay the compilation costs on each run.

Syntax Highlighting

We support syntax highlighting for some text editors and are actively working to add more. Contributions are most welcome.