Building from Source

Building overview

Building Beef from source is not required for platforms that have binary distributions available (ie: Windows).

Source code is available at https://github.com/beefytech/Beef.

Bootstrapping

The core of the Beef compiler is written in C++, while the IDE and command-line BeefBuild build system is written in Beef itself. For bootstrapping purposes, Beef includes a minimal bootstrapping compiler whose sole job is to perform an initial BeefBuild build, which then performs a ‘proper’ build of itself.

Building on Windows

Requirements

• Microsoft C++ build tools for Visual Studio 2017 or later. You can install just Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools or the entire Visual Studio suite from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual-studio-2022.
• Platform Toolset 141 (VS2017)
• Windows SDK 10.0.17763.0
• CMake 3.15 or newer
• Python 3.6 or newer
• Git command line tools

Build Steps

• Execute bin/build.bat

The build results will be in IDE/dist

Building on Linux and macOS

Requirements

• CMake 3.15 or newer
• LLVM 22.1 (development package, e.g. llvm-22-dev)
• A C/C++ compiler (gcc or clang), make, and Git
• Optional: Ninja, for faster builds

Additional requirements for building the IDE (Linux):

• SDL3 development package (e.g. libsdl3-dev). The IDE loads libSDL3.so at runtime, which is normally provided by the development package.
• LLDB 22 development package and lldb-server (e.g. liblldb-22-dev and lldb-22) for debugging support. If LLDB isn’t found, the IDE still builds but without a debugger. If lldb-server is installed in an unusual location, set LLDB_DEBUGGER_PATH.

Build Steps

• Build the command-line tools with bin/build.sh
• Build the command-line tools and the IDE with bin/build.sh ide

The build results will be in IDE/dist, and the IDE can be run with IDE/dist/BeefIDE. The build also runs the compiler test suite.

Other options: bin/build.sh clean removes previous build output, and no_ffi disables FFI support.

To install, run bin/install.sh (installs to /opt/BeefLang by default, or pass a destination path). The IDE is included if it was built.

The IDE is supported on Windows and Linux. On macOS, only the command-line tools such as BeefBuild are currently supported.