Building and installing

Requirements

• Since buzz is built with Zig, you should be able to build buzz on a wide variety of architectures even though this has only been tested on x86_64/aarch64.
• Linux, macOS or Windows
• libc
• Zig 0.16.0 (exact version here)

Build

1. Clone the project: git clone https://github.com/buzz-language/buzz <buzz_dir>
2. Check out submodules: git submodule update --init
3. Have fun:

• zig build run to start the REPL
• zig build run -- <script>.buzz to run a standalone script
• zig build run -- . to run src/main.buzz from the current package
• zig build run -- test <script>.buzz to run a script's test blocks

Install

# install locally at ~/.local
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe install -p ~/.local

# install globally at /usr/local
sudo zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe install -p /usr/local

If your usage is performance critical (game dev for example), you can build using -Doptimize=ReleaseFast.

Remember to modify PATH to include the bin directory where it is installed. For example, export PATH=$PATH:/home/xxx/.local/bin. You can then run buzz with commands such as buzz, buzz <script>.buzz, or buzz <directory>.

CLI

The installed buzz binary runs scripts and package directories directly, with subcommands for tools:

buzz                       # start the REPL
buzz <script>.buzz         # run a standalone script
buzz <directory>           # run src/main.buzz from a buzz package
buzz test <script>.buzz    # run test blocks from a script
buzz check <script>.buzz   # parse and type-check without running
buzz format <script>.buzz  # format a script
buzz init                  # create a minimal package
buzz fetch                 # fetch package dependencies

Formatter

The CLI can format a buzz script and print the result to stdout:

buzz format <script>.buzz

Use --line-width to change the formatter's line width:

buzz format --line-width 100 <script>.buzz

IDE support

VS Code

Install the VS Code extension to get syntax highlighting, LSP and DAP support.

Helix

To get syntax highlighting and LSP support in helix:

• Clone https://github.com/buzz-language/tree-sitter-buzz somewhere
• Add the following to your language.toml:

[[language]]
name = "buzz"
scope = "source.buzz"
file-types = ["buzz"]
comment-token = "//"
indent = { tab-width = 4, unit = "    " }
language-servers = [ { name = "buzz-lsp" } ]

[[grammar]]
name = "buzz"
source = { path = "<PATH_TO_TREE_SITTER_BUZZ>" }

[language-server.buzz-lsp]
command = "buzz_lsp"

• Rebuild helix's grammars

$ hx --grammar build