• Open an issue!
• Use the mailing list.
• Join #ponylang on freenode.
• A tutorial is available here.
• A cookbook style book of patterns is in progress
• Standard library docs are available here.

• Sublime Text: Pony Language
• Atom: language-pony
• Visual Studio: VS-pony
• Vim: pony.vim
• Emacs:
  • ponylang-mode
  • flycheck-pony
  • pony-snippets
• BBEdit: bbedit-pony

The homebrew version is currently woefully out of date. We are transitioning to a new release system that will keep homebrew up to date. For now, please build from source.

$ brew update 
$ brew install ponyc

layman -a stefantalpalaru
emerge dev-lang/pony

A live ebuild is also available in the overlay (dev-lang/pony-9999) and for Vim users there's app-vim/pony-syntax.

We're transitioning to a new binary release system. For now, please build from source.

You will need to build from source.

First, install LLVM 3.6.2, 3.7.1 or 3.8 using your package manager. You may need to install zlib, ncurses, pcre2, and ssl as well. Instructions for some specific distributions follow.

Add the following to /etc/apt/sources:

deb http://llvm.org/apt/jessie/ llvm-toolchain-jessie-3.8 main
deb-src http://llvm.org/apt/jessie/ llvm-toolchain-jessie-3.8 main

Install the LLVM toolchain public GPG key, update apt and install packages:

$ wget -O - http://llvm.org/apt/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key|sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install make gcc g++ git zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev \
                       libssl-dev llvm-3.8-dev

Debian Jessie and some other Linux distributions don't include pcre2 in their package manager. pcre2 is used by the Pony regex package. To download and build pcre2 from source:

$ wget ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre2-10.21.tar.bz2
$ tar xvf pcre2-10.21.tar.bz2
$ cd pcre2-10.21
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install

To build ponyc and compile helloworld:

$ make config=release
$ ./build/release/ponyc examples/helloworld

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential git llvm-dev \
                       zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libssl-dev

Ubuntu 15.10 and some other Linux distributions don't include pcre2 in their package manager. pcre2 is used by the Pony regex package. To download and build pcre2 from source:

$ wget ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/pcre2-10.21.tar.bz2
$ tar xvf pcre2-10.21.tar.bz2
$ cd pcre2-10.21
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install

To build ponyc and compile helloworld:

$ make config=release
$ ./build/release/ponyc examples/helloworld

Please note that the LLVM 3.8 apt packages do not include debug symbols. As a result, the ponyc config=debug build fails when using those packages. If you need a debug compiler built with LLVM 3.8, you will need to build LLVM from source.

First, install the required dependencies:

sudo pkg install gmake
sudo pkg install llvm38
sudo pkg install pcre2
sudo pkg install libunwind

This will build ponyc and compile helloworld:

$ gmake config=release
$ ./build/release/ponyc examples/helloworld

Please note that on 32-bit X86, using LLVM 3.7 or 3.8 on FreeBSD currently produces executables that don't run. Please use LLVM 3.6. 64-bit X86 does not have this problem, and works fine with LLVM 3.7 and 3.8.

You'll need llvm 3.6.2, 3.7.1, or 3.8 and the pcre2 library to build Pony.

Either install them via homebrew:

$ brew update
$ brew install homebrew/versions/llvm38 pcre2 libressl

Or install them via macport:

$ sudo port install llvm-3.8 pcre2 libressl
$ sudo port select --set llvm mp-llvm-3.8

Then launch the build with Make:

$ make config=release
$ ./build/release/ponyc examples/helloworld

The LLVM prebuilt binaries for Windows do NOT include the LLVM development tools and libraries. Instead, you will have to build and install LLVM 3.7 or 3.8 from source. You will need to make sure that the path to LLVM/bin (location of llvm-config) is in your PATH variable.

LLVM recommends using the GnuWin32 unix tools; your mileage may vary using MSYS or Cygwin.

• Install GnuWin32 using the GetGnuWin32 tool.
• Install Python (3.5 or 2.7).
• Install CMake.
• Get the LLVM source (e.g. 3.7.1 is at 3.7.1).
• Make sure you have VS2015 with the C++ tools installed.
• Generate LLVM VS2015 configuration with CMake. You can use the GUI to configure and generate the VS projects; make sure you use the 64-bit generator (Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64), and set the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to where you want LLVM to live.
• Open the LLVM.sln in Visual Studio 2015 and build the INSTALL project in the LLVM solution in Release mode.

Building Pony requires Premake 5.

• Get the PreMake 5 executable.
• Get the PonyC source.
• Run premake5.exe --with-tests --to=..\vs vs2015 to generate the PonyC solution.
• Build ponyc.sln in Release mode.

In order to run the pony compiler, you'll need a few libraries in your environment (pcre2, libssl, libcrypto).

There is a third-party utility that will get the libraries and set up your environment:

• Install 7-Zip, make sure it's in your PATH.
• Open a VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt (things will not work correctly otherwise!) and run:

> git clone git@github.com:kulibali/ponyc-windows-libs.git
> cd ponyc-windows-libs
> .\getlibs.bat
> .\setenv.bat

Now you can run the pony compiler and tests:

> cd path_to_pony_source
> build\release\testc.exe
> build\release\testrt.exe
> build\release\ponyc.exe -d -s packages\stdlib
> .\stdlib

You can enable LTO when building the compiler in release mode. There are slight differences between platforms so you'll need to do a manual setup. LTO is enabled by setting lto to yes in the build command line:

$ make config=release lto=yes

If the build fails, you have to specify the LTO plugin for your compiler in the LTO_PLUGIN variable. For example:

$ make config=release LTO_PLUGIN=/usr/lib/LLVMgold.so

Refer to your compiler documentation for the plugin to use in your case.

LTO is enabled by default on OSX.

Pony binaries can trigger illegal instruction errors under VirtualBox 4.x, for at least the x86_64 platform and possibly others.

Use VirtualBox 5.x to avoid possible problems.