The V Programming Language

vlang.io | Docs | Changelog | Speed | Contributing

Key Features of V

Simplicity: the language can be learned in less than an hour
Fast compilation: ≈100k — 1.2 million loc/s
Easy to develop: V compiles itself in less than a second
Performance: within 3% of C
Safety: no null, no globals, no undefined behavior, immutability by default
C to V translation
Hot code reloading
Cross-platform UI library
Built-in graphics library
Easy cross compilation
REPL
Built-in ORM
C and JavaScript backends

A stable 0.2 release is planned for April 2020. Right now V is in an alpha stage.

Installing V from source

Linux, macOS, Windows, *BSD, Solaris, WSL, Android, Raspbian

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
make

That's it! Now you have a V executable at [path to V repo]/v. [path to V repo] can be anywhere.

(On Windows make means running make.bat, so make sure you use cmd.exe.)

V is being constantly updated. To update V, simply run:

v up

C compiler

You'll need Clang or GCC or Visual Studio. If you are doing development, you most likely already have one of those installed.

Otherwise, follow these instructions:

Symlinking

You can create a /usr/local/bin/v symlink so that V is globally available:

sudo ./v symlink

Docker

Expand Docker instructions

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
docker build -t vlang .
docker run --rm -it vlang:latest
v

Docker with Alpine/musl:

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
docker build -t vlang --file=Dockerfile.alpine .
docker run --rm -it vlang:latest
/usr/local/v/v

Testing and running the examples

Make sure V can compile itself:

v -o v2 cmd/v

$ v
V 0.1.x
Use Ctrl-C or `exit` to exit

>>> println('hello world')
hello world
>>>

cd examples
v hello_world.v && ./hello_world    # or simply
v run hello_world.v                 # this builds the program and runs it right away

v word_counter.v && ./word_counter cinderella.txt
v run news_fetcher.v
v run tetris/tetris.v

In order to build Tetris and anything else using the graphics module, you will need to install glfw and freetype libraries.

If you plan to use the http package, you also need to install OpenSSL on non-Windows systems.

macOS:
brew install glfw freetype openssl

Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install libglfw3 libglfw3-dev libfreetype6-dev libssl-dev

Arch/Manjaro:
sudo pacman -S glfw-x11 freetype2

Fedora:
sudo dnf install glfw glfw-devel freetype-devel

Windows:
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/ubawurinna/freetype-windows-binaries [path to v repo]/thirdparty/freetype/

glfw dependency will be removed soon.