Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust stable 1.93+ (rustup)
• Python 3 development headers (for PyO3 interop)
• Linux or macOS (Windows planned)
• A C compiler and linker (GCC/Clang + GNU bfd linker on Linux)

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/dporkka/nulang.git
cd nulang
cargo build --release

The release build uses opt-level=3, LTO, and single codegen-unit for maximum performance. A debug build (cargo build) is faster to compile but runs ~10x slower.

Feature Flags

Nulang supports optional features for leaner builds:

# Minimal build (no Python, SQLite, or LSP)
cargo build --release --no-default-features

# With WASM backend
cargo build --release --features wasm-backend

# All features
cargo build --release --all-features

Feature	Default	Description
python	On	PyO3 Python interop
sqlite	On	libsql/Turso persistence
lsp	On	tower-lsp language server
wasm-backend	Off	WASM compiler + Wasmtime runtime

Verifying the Build

# Run the test suite
cargo test

# Start the REPL
cargo run -- --repl

# Run a Nulang program
cargo run -- examples/hello.nula

System-Specific Notes

Fedora Linux

Install Python development headers:

sudo dnf install python3-devel

The build.rs script automatically creates a libpythonX.Y.so symlink for PyO3 linking.

macOS

Install Python via Homebrew:

brew install python@3.14

Next Steps

Now that Nulang is installed, follow the Quick Start guide to write your first program.