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Beans

Building the compiler

Beans is self-hosted: the compiler is written in Beans. To build it from source you need an existing beansc to compile it with. The project Makefile drives the build, and VERSION is the single version source.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • clang
  • lld
  • make
  • git

On Debian or Ubuntu:

Terminal window
sudo apt-get install clang lld make git

On macOS, native builds also need the command-line tools:

Terminal window
xcode-select --install

Building on a public checkout

Section titled “Building on a public checkout”

A checkout builds build/beansc using an already-installed beansc: the one on your PATH, or at $BEANS_HOME/bin/beansc. Under the hood it runs:

Terminal window
beansc build --release src/main.b -o build/beansc.new

The full loop:

Terminal window
# 1. install a release compiler first (the one-line installer)
# 2. get the source
git clone https://github.com/beans-lang/beans.git
cd beans
# 3. build
make
# 4. check it
./build/beansc --version
./build/beansc run examples/hello.b

Choose which compiler bootstraps the build with BEANSC_BOOT:

Terminal window
make BEANSC_BOOT=/path/to/beansc

See Install Beans for the one-line installer.

The self-hosting proof

Section titled “The self-hosting proof”

The old C++ stage-0 bootstrap is gone. A released Beans compiler now bootstraps the source compiler. make test-fixpoint rebuilds the compiler twice with the same release flags and requires the two binaries to be byte-identical. That fixed point proves the self-hosted compiler reproduces itself.

make test runs the behavioural suites and the fixed-point gate. See Running the tests.

Installing

Section titled “Installing”
Terminal window
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr/local

This installs beansc, the runtime sources, and the standard library.

See Running the tests and Contributing for the change workflow.