The Crab Programming Language
This is the main source code repository for Crab. It contains the compiler, standard library, and documentation.
Note: this README is for users rather than contributors. If you wish to contribute to the compiler, you should read CONTRIBUTING.md instead.
Quick Start
To get started with the renamed CrabLang toolchain, run the following:
sh <(curl https://install.crablang.org -L)
* currently Unix only
Installing from Source
The Crab build system uses a Python script called x.py
to build the compiler,
which manages the bootstrapping process. It lives at the root of the project.
The x.py
command can be run directly on most Unix systems in the following
format:
./x.py <subcommand> [flags]
This is how the documentation and examples assume you are running x.py
.
Some alternative ways are:
# On a Unix shell if you don't have the necessary `python3` command
./x <subcommand> [flags]
# On the Windows Command Prompt (if .py files are configured to run Python)
x.py <subcommand> [flags]
# You can also run Python yourself, e.g.:
python x.py <subcommand> [flags]
More information about x.py
can be found by running it with the --help
flag
or reading the crabc dev guide.
Dependencies
Make sure you have installed the dependencies:
python
3 or 2.7git
- A C compiler (when building for the host,
cc
is enough; cross-compiling may need additional compilers) curl
(not needed on Windows)pkg-config
if you are compiling on Linux and targeting Linuxlibiconv
(already included with glibc on Debian-based distros)
To build Crabgo, you'll also need OpenSSL (libssl-dev
or openssl-devel
on
most Unix distros).
If building LLVM from source, you'll need additional tools:
g++
,clang++
, or MSVC with versions listed on LLVM's documentationninja
, or GNUmake
3.81 or later (Ninja is recommended, especially on Windows)cmake
3.13.4 or laterlibstdc++-static
may be required on some Linux distributions such as Fedora and Ubuntu
On tier 1 or tier 2 with host tools platforms, you can also choose to download
LLVM by setting llvm.download-ci-llvm = true
.
Otherwise, you'll need LLVM installed and llvm-config
in your path.
See the crabc-dev-guide for more info.
Building on a Unix-like system
-
Clone the source with
git
:git clone https://github.com/crablang/crab.git cd crab
-
Configure the build settings:
The CrabLang build system uses a file named
config.toml
in the root of the source tree to determine various configuration settings for the build. Set up the defaults intended for distros to get started. You can see a full list of options inconfig.example.toml
.printf 'profile = "user" \nchangelog-seen = 2 \n' > config.toml
If you plan to use
x.py install
to create an installation, it is recommended that you set theprefix
value in the[install]
section to a directory. -
Build and install:
./x.py build && ./x.py install
When complete,
./x.py install
will place several programs into$PREFIX/bin
:crabc
, the CrabLang compiler, andcrablangdoc
, the API-documentation tool. If you've setprofile = "user"
orbuild.extended = true
, it will also include Crabgo, CrabLang's package manager.
Building on Windows
On Windows, we suggest using winget to install dependencies by running the following in a terminal:
winget install -e Python.Python.3
winget install -e Kitware.CMake
winget install -e Git.Git
Then edit your system's PATH
variable and add: C:\Program Files\CMake\bin
.
See
this guide on editing the system PATH
from the Java documentation.
There are two prominent ABIs in use on Windows: the native (MSVC) ABI used by Visual Studio and the GNU ABI used by the GCC toolchain. Which version of CrabLang you need depends largely on what C/C++ libraries you want to interoperate with. Use the MSVC build of CrabLang to interop with software produced by Visual Studio and the GNU build to interop with GNU software built using the MinGW/MSYS2 toolchain.
MinGW
MSYS2 can be used to easily build CrabLang on Windows:
-
Download the latest MSYS2 installer and go through the installer.
-
Run
mingw32_shell.bat
ormingw64_shell.bat
from the MSYS2 installation directory (e.g.C:\msys64
), depending on whether you want 32-bit or 64-bit CrabLang. (As of the latest version of MSYS2 you have to runmsys2_shell.cmd -mingw32
ormsys2_shell.cmd -mingw64
from the command line instead.) -
From this terminal, install the required tools:
# Update package mirrors (may be needed if you have a fresh install of MSYS2) pacman -Sy pacman-mirrors # Install build tools needed for CrabLang. If you're building a 32-bit compiler, # then replace "x86_64" below with "i686". If you've already got Git, Python, # or CMake installed and in PATH you can remove them from this list. # Note that it is important that you do **not** use the 'python2', 'cmake', # and 'ninja' packages from the 'msys2' subsystem. # The build has historically been known to fail with these packages. pacman -S git \ make \ diffutils \ tar \ mingw-w64-x86_64-python \ mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake \ mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc \ mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja
-
Navigate to CrabLang's source code (or clone it), then build it:
./x.py build && ./x.py install
MSVC
MSVC builds of CrabLang additionally require an installation of Visual Studio 2017
(or later) so crabc
can use its linker. The simplest way is to get
Visual Studio, check the "C++ build tools" and "Windows 10 SDK" workload.
(If you're installing CMake yourself, be careful that "C++ CMake tools for Windows" doesn't get included under "Individual components".)
With these dependencies installed, you can build the compiler in a cmd.exe
shell with:
python x.py build
Right now, building CrabLang only works with some known versions of Visual Studio. If you have a more recent version installed and the build system doesn't understand, you may need to force crablangbuild to use an older version. This can be done by manually calling the appropriate vcvars file before running the bootstrap.
CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
python x.py build
Specifying an ABI
Each specific ABI can also be used from either environment (for example, using the GNU ABI in PowerShell) by using an explicit build triple. The available Windows build triples are:
- GNU ABI (using GCC)
i686-pc-windows-gnu
x86_64-pc-windows-gnu
- The MSVC ABI
i686-pc-windows-msvc
x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
The build triple can be specified by either specifying --build=<triple>
when
invoking x.py
commands, or by creating a config.toml
file (as described in
Installing from Source), and modifying the build
option under the [build]
section.
Configure and Make
While it's not the recommended build system, this project also provides a
configure script and makefile (the latter of which just invokes x.py
).
./configure
make && sudo make install
configure
generates a config.toml
which can also be used with normal x.py
invocations.
Building Documentation
If you'd like to build the documentation, it's almost the same:
./x.py doc
The generated documentation will appear under doc
in the build
directory for
the ABI used. That is, if the ABI was x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
, the directory
will be build\x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\doc
.
Notes
Since the CrabLang compiler is written in CrabLang, it must be built by a precompiled "snapshot" version of itself (made in an earlier stage of development). As such, source builds require an Internet connection to fetch snapshots, and an OS that can execute the available snapshot binaries.
See https://doc.crablang.org/nightly/crabc/platform-support.html for a list of supported platforms. Only "host tools" platforms have a pre-compiled snapshot binary available; to compile for a platform without host tools you must cross-compile.
You may find that other platforms work, but these are our officially supported build environments that are most likely to work.
Getting Help
Need help? Join us on discord at https://community.crablang.org!
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
CrabLang is primarily distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0), with portions covered by various BSD-like licenses.
See LICENSE-APACHE, LICENSE-MIT, and COPYRIGHT for details.
Trademark
If you want to use any names or brands associated with Crab or CrabLang, please feel free to do so in any capacity.
Third-party logos may be subject to third-party copyrights and trademarks. See Licenses for details.