Novus

Novus is a small, statically-typed systems language that compiles directly to native machine code. It targets darwin/arm64, linux/amd64, linux/arm64, linux/x86 and windows/amd64 today.

Status: active development. The language is stable enough to write real command-line apps (see Todo-App and stopwatch), but expect rough edges.

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Install

Automatic:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MJDaws0n/novus/main/install.sh | bash

Manual: grab a binary for your platform from the releases page and put it on your PATH.

sudo cp novus_<your-platform> /usr/local/bin/novus
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/novus
# macOS only:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/bin/novus

It is strongly recommended to also install the package manager, Nox.

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Quick start

nox init my-app
cd my-app
novus main.nov
./build/<target>/my-app

nox init already adds the standard library (std) by default. The starter main.nov looks like:

module my_app

import lib/std std;

fn main() -> i32 {
    std.print("Hello, world!");
    std.exit(0);
    return 0;
}

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Language at a glance

module example

import lib/std std;

fn greet(name: str) -> void {
    std.print("Hi " + name);
}

fn greet(times: i32) -> void {       // function overloading
    let i: i32 = 0;
    while (i < times) {
        std.print("Hi!");
        i += 1;                      // compound assignment
    }
}

fn main() -> i32 {
    greet("Max");
    greet(3);

    let xs: []i32 = [1, 2, 3];
    std.print(std.to_str(std.len(xs)));    // unified len/to_str

    std.exit(0);
    return 0;
}

See docs/docs.md for the full language reference.

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Build the compiler from source

go run cmd/novus/main.go --target=darwin/arm64 path/to/file.nov

Cross-compilation toolchain notes

• linux/amd64, linux/386 need NASM + ld.
• linux/arm64 needs aarch64-linux-gnu-as and aarch64-linux-gnu-ld when the host is not arm64.
• windows/amd64 needs NASM + GoLink (or link.exe).
• darwin/arm64 needs Apple's as/ld (i.e. Xcode CLT) or a darwin cross toolchain.

Artifacts are written to build/<target>/. Valid target names: darwin_arm64, linux_x86_64, linux_x86, linux_arm64, windows_x86_64.

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Repository layout

• cmd/novus/ — compiler CLI entry point
• internal/ — lexer, parser, semantic analysis, IR, codegen
• docs/ — language and library reference
• docs/notes/ — developer notes / learning material
• vscode-novus/ — VS Code syntax extension
• examples/ — example apps and tiny libraries

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Related projects

• Nox — the package manager
• novus-std — standard library
• Todo-App and stopwatch — example CLI apps