The Ghost Programming Language

Ghost is a small, object-oriented, embeddable toy scripting language. While object-oriented, Ghost also supports procedural and functional programming styles as well.

Ghost is dynamically typed, runs by a tree-walking interpreter, and has automatic memory management thanks to its implementation through the Go programming language.

Status

Currently in beta, vetting out the language and seeing how it feels writing/running. Major changes are still possible at this stage.

Documentation

You will find robust, user friendly, and updated documentation on our website.

Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

Installation

Brew

If you're on mac, you may use homebrew:

$ brew tap ghost-language/ghost
$ brew install ghost-language/ghost/ghost

Go Install

If you have Go installed, you may use go install:

go install ghostlang.org/x/ghost

Direct Download

You may download the compiled binaries for your platform from our GitHub releases page.

Development

• To build and execute Ghost, run make.
• To build Ghost, run make build.
• To execute tests, run make test.

$  git clone [email protected]:ghost-language/ghost.git
$  cd ghost
$  make
   Ghost (x.x)
   Press Ctrl + C to exit

>>

CLI

You can execute code written in Ghost in various ways using the CLI.

REPL

Ghost includes a simple REPL to write and execute Ghost code directly in your terminal. To enter the REPL environment, run ghost on its own:

$  ghost
   Ghost (x.x)
   Press Ctrl + C to exit

>>

Executing Files

To execute a Ghost source file (.ghost), pass either the relative or absolute path of the file to ghost. The source file will be executed and then exit back to the terminal.

$  ghost examples/fibtc.ghost
   9227465
$

Interactive Mode

Interactive mode allows you to execute a Ghost source file, and then immediately jump into a REPL session with the state of the source file still intact. To enter interactive mode, pass the -i flag to ghost.

$  ghost -i examples/fibtc.ghost
   (executed in: 350.374µs)
>> x
   9227465
>>

Releasing

Ghost is hosted and distributed through GitHub. We utilize GoReleaser to automate the release process. GoReleaser will build all the necessary binaries, publish the release and publish the brew tap formula. The following steps outline the process for maintainers of Ghost:

1. Ensure you have a GitHub token with repo access saved to your environment:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="YOUR_GH_TOKEN"

2. Ensure the internal version reference is updated:

   // version/version.go
   
   var (
      Version = "x.y.z"
   )

3. Create a new tag:

$ git tag -a vx.y.z -m "Release description"
$ git push origin vx.y.z

4. Run GoReleaser:

$ goreleaser

Credits

• Crafting Interpreters
• Writing An Interpreter In Go

License

Ghost is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for complete details.