134 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
134 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
# The V Programming Language 0.1.2
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[](https://dev.azure.com/alexander0785/vlang/_build/latest?definitionId=1&branchName=master)
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https://vlang.io
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Documentation: https://vlang.io/docs
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/v_language
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Discord (primary community): https://discord.gg/n7c74HM
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Installing V: https://github.com/vlang/v#installing-v-from-source
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## Key Features of V
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- Simplicity: the language can be learned in half an hour, less if you already know Go
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- Fast compilation: ~100k loc/s right now, ~1.2 million loc/s once x64 generation is mature enough
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- Easy to develop: V compiles itself in less than a second
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- Performance: within 5% of C
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- Safety: no null, no globals, no UB, immutability by default
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- C to V translation
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- Hot code reloading
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- Powerful UI and graphics libraries
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- Easy cross compilation
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- REPL
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V 1.0 release is planned for December 2019.
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## Notes
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GitHub marks V's code as written in Go. It's actually written in V, GitHub doesn't support the language yet.
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The compilation is temporarily slower for this release:
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- Debug builds are used (use `v -prod -o v` to get faster compilation).
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- vlib is recompiled with every program you build.
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- The new formatter runs on every single token and slows the compiler down by ~20%. This will be taken care of.
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- There are a lot of known issues that are quick to fix (like function lookups being O(n)).
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There's some old hacky code written when V was 2 months old. All of it will be quickly cleaned up. There are ~500 lines of C code, which will be removed by the end of June.
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## Code structure
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https://github.com/vlang/v/blob/master/CodeStructure.md
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## Installing V from source
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### Linux and macOS
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You'll need Clang or GCC. On macOS run `xcode-select --install` if you don't have XCode or XCode tools installed.
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```bash
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# You can clone V anywhere
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git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
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cd v/compiler
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make
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```
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Or build without make:
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```bash
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# Download the V compiler's source translated to C
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wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vlang/vc/master/v.c
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cc -std=gnu11 -w -o v v.c # Build it with Clang or GCC
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./v -o v . # Use the resulting V binary to build V from V source
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./v -o v . # Build the compiler again to make sure it works
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```
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That's it! Now you have a V executable at `v/compiler/v`.
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You can create a symlink so that it's globally available:
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```
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sudo ln -s [path to V repo]/compiler/v /usr/local/bin/v
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```
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### Windows
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V works great on Windows Subsystem for Linux. The instructions are the same as above.
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If you want to build v.exe on Windows without WSL, you will need Visual Studio. Microsoft doesn't make it easy for developers. Mingw-w64 could suffice, but if you plan to develop UI and graphical apps, VS is your only option.
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V temporarily can't be compiled with Visual Studio. This will be fixed asap.
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### Testing
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```
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$ cd examples
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$ v run hello_world.v
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hello world
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$ v
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V 0.1.2
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Use Ctrl-D to exit
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>>> println('hello world')
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hello world
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>>>
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```
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Now if you want, you can start tinkering with the compiler. If you introduce a breaking change and rebuild V, you will no longer be able to use V to build itself. So it's a good idea to make a backup copy of a working compiler executable.
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### Running the examples
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```
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v hello_world.v && ./hello_world # or simply
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v run hello_world.v # this builds the program and runs it right away
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v word_counter.v && ./word_counter cinderella.txt
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v run news_fetcher.v
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v run tetris.v
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```
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<img src='https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vlang/v/master/examples/tetris/screenshot.png' width=300>
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In order to build Tetris and anything else using the graphics module, you will need to install glfw and freetype.
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If you plan to use the http package, you also need to install libcurl.
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```
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macOS:
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brew install glfw freetype curl
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Ubuntu:
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sudo apt install libglfw3 libglfw3-dev libfreetype6-dev libcurl3-dev
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Arch:
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sudo pacman -S glfw-x11 curl freetype2
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```
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glfw and libcurl dependencies will be removed soon.
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