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Installing Nox

Nox ships as a single archive per platform containing noxc (the compiler and tool), noxlsp (the language server), the runtime objects, the standard library, the bundled qbe back end (Linux, macOS) and the header include/nox_nni.h.

Requirements#

To compile and run programs: a C toolchain for linking (cc) — Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, build-essential/gcc on Linux, MinGW-w64 or Zig on Windows — and, for the default LLVM back end, clang or zig on PATH. With neither, Nox falls back to the bundled QBE back end automatically.
To build Nox from source: Zig 0.16.

macOS and Linux#

Shell

curl -fsSL https://noxlang.com/install.sh | sh

The script downloads the latest release for your platform (macOS arm64, Linux x86-64, Linux arm64) and unpacks it under ~/.nox-lang. Add its bin directory to your PATH:

Shell

export PATH="$HOME/.nox-lang/bin:$PATH"
noxc --version

Environment variables for the installer: NOX_INSTALL_DIR (install root) and NOX_VERSION (a specific tag such as v2.0.0 instead of the latest).

Windows#

PowerShell

irm https://noxlang.com/install.ps1 | iex

This installs noxc.exe and friends under %USERPROFILE%\.nox-lang (override with NOX_INSTALL_DIR) and checks for a C toolchain. Install Zig (winget install zig.zig) so Nox can use zig cc to link — this is also the default LLVM path on Windows.

From a release archive#

Download nox-lang-<version>-<platform>.tar.gz (or .zip on Windows) and its .sha256 file from the GitHub releases, verify the checksum, unpack, and put bin/ on your PATH. The archive's layout is bin/, lib/ (runtime objects and lib/nox/stdlib) and include/.

From source#

Shell

git clone https://github.com/mburakmmm/nox-lang
cd nox-lang
zig build                       # builds into zig-out/
zig-out/bin/noxc --version
zig build test --summary all    # optional: the full test suite

Updating#

Shell

noxc upgrade --check            # is there a newer release?
noxc upgrade                    # update in place (checksum verified)
noxc upgrade v2.1.0             # a specific version

Check your installation#

Shell

printf 'print("hello from nox")\n' > hello.nox
noxc run hello.nox

Next: the tutorial.

Troubleshooting#

Symptom	Fix
`noxc: command not found`	add the install `bin/` directory to `PATH`
a note that neither clang nor zig was found and QBE is used	install `clang` (Xcode CLT / `apt install clang`) or `zig` for the faster LLVM back end; the program still compiles
linking fails with `cc` not found	install a C toolchain (`xcode-select --install`, `apt install build-essential`)
`libsqlite3` / `libpq` / `libmysqlclient` errors at run time	those libraries are loaded on first use; install the one you need
Windows: build errors about MinGW	install Zig and re-run; or install MinGW-w64 and ensure `cc` is on `PATH`

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