skull

The Skull Programming Language

Syntax Proposal

import io.print

# this is a comment!

main() Int {
  print("hello world!")

  return 0
}

return main()

Run via Docker

Versions and sizes (as of v0.9.0):

Version	Size
alpine	312MB
archlinux	1.62GB
ubuntu	407MB
alpine-dev	579MB
archlinux-dev	2.35GB
ubuntu-dev	1.32GB

Running:

$ docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/dosisod/skull:<VERSION> bash

The reason these dockerfiles are so big is because they include development packages such as GCC, which is needed for the final compilation of Skull programs. This might change in the future though.

Setup

Before you build you will need to install LLVM as well as some development packages. Currently Skull is compatible with LLVM 15 and 16.

Note: If you plan on developing Skull, you will need to install LLVM 16. For Ubuntu, this requires you have Ubuntu Lunar (23.04) or newer installed.

Ubuntu

$ sudo apt install llvm-15-dev build-essential git xxd

Note: the llvm-15-dev package is only available on Ubuntu Jammy (22.04) or newer. If you want to use Skull in earlier versions of Ubuntu you will need to add the LLVM APT repositories to your system (untested), or build from source.

Arch Linux

$ sudo pacman -S base-devel clang llvm llvm-libs git man-db vim

Building and Running

$ git clone https://github.com/dosisod/skull
$ cd skull
$ sudo make install
$ skull

Testing

Note: docker is required for running https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck in the pre-commit file.

Install additional dependencies:

Ubuntu

Install https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/.

In addition run:

$ sudo apt install llvm-16-dev clang-tidy-16

Arch Linux

Install https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Docker.

Running Tests

Tests are best ran via a pre-commit:

# run tests, wont commit unless tests pass
$ git commit

To use the pre-commit, run the following:

$ ln -sf $(pwd)/pre-commit .git/hooks/pre-commit

The first time you install Skull globally, you will need to also install the header files, which should only need to be done once (until they are updated). You can do this by running:

$ sudo make install-dev

Tests may also be ran manually (no pre-commit):

$ make test e2e
$ ./build/test/test
$ ./test/sh/main.sh

Syntax Highlighting

It is recommended to use the newer tree-sitter syntax highlighter instead of the older Vim syntax highlighter.

Once you do have it installed though you will automatically get syntax highlighting for all .sk files!

Todo

• Runnable Skull files
• C to Skull bindings
• Skull to C bindings
• Rich Skull std library