Dependencies

Make sure you have installed the dependencies:

• python 3 or 2.7
• git
• 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 Linux
• libiconv (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 documentation
• ninja, or GNU make 3.81 or later (Ninja is recommended, especially on
  Windows)
• cmake 3.13.4 or later
• libstdc++-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

1. Clone the source with git:

   git clone https://github.com/crablang/crab.git
   cd crab

2. 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 in config.example.toml.

   config.toml” dir=”auto”>

   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 the prefix value in the [install] section to a
   directory.

3. 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, and crablangdoc, the
   API-documentation tool. If you’ve set profile = "user" or
   build.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 FilesCMakebin.
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:

1. Download the latest MSYS2 installer and go through the installer.

2. Run mingw32_shell.bat or mingw64_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 run msys2_shell.cmd -mingw32 or msys2_shell.cmd -mingw64 from the command line instead.)

3. 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

4. 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:

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 Studio2019CommunityVCAuxiliaryBuildvcvars64.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= 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