Getting Started

Odin is dead-simple to get started with!

Latest Release Latest Nightly Builds

Clone or download Odin binaries #

You can either:

Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/odin-lang/Odin (recommended).

Or download the latest binaries and add them to your path:

Download the latest release.

Download the latest nightly build.

Note: Cloning the repository is recommended in order to make updating easier.

Support #

Odin supports x86-64/AMD64 on Windows, Linux and macOS, and ARM64 on macOS. Odin also relies on LLVM (for code generation) and an external linker.

Requirements #

The following platform-specific steps are necessary:

  • Windows

    • Have Visual Studio installed (VS2019-2022 is recommend, VS2017 will likely work, for the linker)
    • Open a valid command prompt:
      • Basic: run the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS2017 shortcut bundled with VS 2017, or
      • Advanced: run vcvarsall.bat x64 from a blank cmd session

  • MacOS

    • Install the latest XCode (from the App Store or the Xcode website)
    • Install XCode command-line tools xcode-select --install
    • Install Homebrew
    • Install LLVM through Homebrew with: brew install llvm@14
    • Make sure the LLVM binaries and the linker are added to your $PATH environmental variable (see brew info llvm@14)

  • GNU/Linux and other *Nix

    • For Linux: clang and llvm (version 11.1, 12, 13, or 14; using your distro’s package manager)
    • Note: If an atomic.h error occurs, also add libx32stdc++-12-dev
    • For FreeBSD: pkg install bash git llvm14
    • Make sure the LLVM binaries and the linker are added to your $PATH environmental variable

Building Odin #

Now, it’s time to build Odin and get started!

For Windows #

There’s a couple prerequisites here. First, make sure you have Visual Studio installed; you have to compile Odin from source, and Odin also requires link.exe from VS anyway. The necessary LLVM components for Windows are included in the Odin repository.

Now, it’s time to build Odin and get started! Open the X64 Visual Studio command prompt (if you don’t typically use it, here’s how to find it) and navigate to the directory where you downloaded Odin. Run the build.bat file, and you should have a successfully built Odin compiler!

To use Odin link.exe is required to be in the PATH of the callee as mentioned, this can either be achieved but calling Odin from the X64 Visual Studio command prompt or by calling the vcvarsall.bat (with x64 as an argument) script either in your shell or in your build script.

For MacOS #

Make sure all requirements for MacOS are installed, after installing LLVM through Homebrew make sure to add it to the PATH:

  • run echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc_profile to add LLVM to your PATH.

Then run source ~/.bash_profile or source ~/.zshrc to update your PATH variable in the current terminal session depending on your shell.

On newer versions of macOS, some headers are not installed by default. Open macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_*.pkg in /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/.

Now navigate to the Odin directory in your terminal, use make, and you should have a newly-built, fresh Odin compiler!

Now you can export the odin folder to the PATH

For Linux and other *Nix #

For Linux, make sure you have llvm and clang installed through your package managers.

For FreeBSD make sure you have bash, git and the latest version of LLVM (the base llvm package is most of the times outdated).

Now navigate to the Odin directory in your terminal, use make, and you should have a newly-built, fresh Odin compiler!

Notes for Linux: The compiler currently relies on the core and shared library collection being relative to the compiler executable. Installing the compiler in the usual sense (to /usr/local/bin or similar) is therefore not as straight forward as you need to make sure the mentioned libraries are available. As a result, it is recommended to simply explicitly invoke the compiler with /path/to/odin in your preferred build system, or add /path/to/odin to $PATH.

Updating the compiler #

For a compiler that’s in-development like Odin, things move fast. Make sure you keep your compiler up-to-date by running git pull and then rebuilding every now and then. (or, if you use releases, redownload and rebuild)

What Next? #

Why not check out the Odin Overview for more information on the Odin Programming Language!