Installation

Nimony must be built from source. You need to have Nim version 2.0 or later. For example:

nim --version
Nim Compiler Version 2.3.1

Clone Nimony from github:

git clone https://github.com/nim-lang/nimony.git
cd nimony

To build it run this command:

nim c -r src/hastur build all

Usage

nimony c <program.nim>

For example:

import std / syncio

echo "Hello from Nimony!"

Configuration

--compat switch

With the --compat switch Nimony completely supports Nim's nim.cfg and NimScript configuration mode. However, as it is a messy legacy system its usage for new projects is discouraged. Instead the "args configuration system" should be used. It has been designed with tooling in mind.

Args configuration system

There are different files that manage different aspects of the configuration:

1. nimony.args is a text file that contains command line arguments that are processed as if they were passed on the command line.
2. nimony.paths is a text file where every line is an entry to the search --path. This is so important for tooling that it became a separate file.
3. $cc.args is a text file that contains command line arguments that are passed to the used C compiler. $cc here stands for a general C compiler key. This key is extracted from the --cc command line option.
4. $linker.args is a text file that contains command line arguments that are passed to the used linker. $linker here stands for a general linker key. This key is extracted from the --linker command line option. If --linker is not used the C compiler command is used for linking.

.args files are processed before the real command line arguments are processed so that they can be overridden. An .args file can contain newlines as whitespace. Lines starting with # are comments. The POSIX command line parsing rules are used: Whitespace enclosed within single or double quotes is kept as is and the quotes are removed.

These files are searched for in the directory of the <program>.nim file and if not found in its parent directories. Only the first file found is used. The idea here is that nobody (neither humans nor tools) needs to perform a "merge" operation of different configuration files.

The --cc command line option

The --cc switch supports a general command prefix that can be as simple as gcc or as complex as /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -Wall.

From the command prefix a "key" is extracted automatically. This key is then used to construct an .args file that can be used to configure the toolchain further. Examples:

• /usr/bin/gcc → gcc.args
• /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc → arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc.args
• /usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe -Wall → x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc.args
• /usr/local/bin/clang → clang.args

This way there is no hardcoded list of C compilers. In fact, C++ or an LLVM based backend is naturally supported too.

The --linker command line option

If the --linker command line option is not used, the C compiler's executable will also be used for linking. The used .args file is then $cc.linker.args.

If the --linker command line option is used, the specified executable will be used for linking. As for the --cc option, the used .args file will then be $linkerName.linker.args. For example --linker:gold.exe will look for a configuration file gold.linker.args.