Installation

Quick install

Download pre-built binaries (no build tools required):

curl -fsSL https://kaappi-lang.org/install.sh | bash

This auto-detects your platform, downloads the latest release of both kaappi and thottam (the package manager), verifies SHA256 checksums, and installs to ~/.local/bin/. Set INSTALL_DIR to change the location:

curl -fsSL https://kaappi-lang.org/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin bash

Build from source

If you prefer to build from source or need a custom configuration:

Prerequisites

• Zig 0.16+ -- the sole build tool (no cmake, make, or cargo)
• C toolchain -- needed to compile the vendored linenoise library (line editing for the REPL). On macOS this comes with Xcode Command Line Tools; on Linux it comes with gcc or clang.

Supported platforms

OS	Architecture	JIT
macOS	aarch64 (Apple Silicon)	AArch64 native
Linux	x86_64	x86_64 native
Linux	aarch64	AArch64 native
Linux	riscv64	No (interpreter only)

macOS binaries are Developer ID signed and Apple notarized — no Gatekeeper warnings when downloading from GitHub releases.

macOS

brew install zig
git clone https://github.com/kaappi/kaappi
cd kaappi
zig build

Linux

Download Zig 0.16+ from ziglang.org/download, extract it, and add it to your PATH. Then:

git clone https://github.com/kaappi/kaappi
cd kaappi
zig build

Install

The executables are placed at zig-out/bin/kaappi and zig-out/bin/thottam. Add them to your PATH:

cp zig-out/bin/kaappi zig-out/bin/thottam /usr/local/bin/

Verify:

echo '(+ 1 2)' | kaappi
# Output: 3

Run the test suite to confirm everything works:

zig build test

Build modes

The default build uses ReleaseSafe (fast execution with bounds checking). For maximum throughput use -Doptimize=ReleaseFast. The Debug mode is roughly 500x slower for allocation-heavy workloads -- only use it when debugging the runtime itself:

zig build -Doptimize=Debug

---

Next: Your First Program