Installing Pooka

Pooka travels light. The whole compiler is one file, called pooka, small enough to carry in a coat pocket. It only asks for one thing in return: a warm place to run, which is Erlang.

This guide has four short paths. Pick the one that matches your machine and follow it from top to bottom.

1. Install Erlang (everyone)
2. Install Pooka on macOS or Linux
3. Install Pooka on Windows
4. Build Pooka from source (optional)

If you only want Pooka inside GitHub Actions, skip to Continuous integration.

1. Install Erlang

Pooka needs Erlang/OTP 29.

Check which version you have:

erl -noshell -eval 'io:format("~s~n", [erlang:system_info(otp_release)]), halt().'

It should print 29. If it prints a smaller number, the compiler may refuse to start, so update Erlang before you go on.

2. Install Pooka on macOS or Linux

Download the compiler and its checksum.

curl -fLO https://github.com/pooka-lang/pooka/releases/download/v0.1.0/pooka
curl -fLO https://github.com/pooka-lang/pooka/releases/download/v0.1.0/pooka.sha256

Check the download. This makes sure the file arrived whole.

shasum -a 256 -c pooka.sha256

On Linux systems without shasum, use sha256sum -c pooka.sha256 instead. It should say pooka: OK. If it says anything else, delete both files and download them again.

Put it somewhere on your PATH.

chmod +x pooka
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
mv pooka ~/.local/bin/pooka

Make sure your shell can find it. If ~/.local/bin is not already on your PATH, add this line to ~/.zshrc (macOS) or ~/.bashrc (most Linux systems), then open a new terminal:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Say hello.

pooka --version

You should see pooka 0.1.0. That's it. You can start your first project.

3. Install Pooka on Windows

Windows does not know how to run a file without an extension, so we give it a small launcher.

1. Create a folder for it, for example C:\Tools\Pooka.

2. Download pooka and pooka.sha256 into that folder.

3. Check the download in PowerShell. The two hashes should be the same:

   (Get-FileHash C:\Tools\Pooka\pooka -Algorithm SHA256).Hash
   Get-Content C:\Tools\Pooka\pooka.sha256

4. In the same folder, create a file called pooka.cmd with these two lines:

   @echo off
   escript "%~dp0pooka" %*

5. Add C:\Tools\Pooka to your PATH: open Start, search for Edit environment variables for your account, select Path, choose Edit, then New, and paste the folder.

6. Open a new terminal and run:

   pooka --version

You should see pooka 0.1.0.

4. Build Pooka from source

You only need this if you want to work on the compiler itself, or try something that is not released yet. You will need Erlang/OTP 29, Gleam and Git.

git clone https://github.com/pooka-lang/pooka.git
cd pooka
./install.sh

The installer builds the compiler, copies it to ~/.local/bin/pooka, and prints the version. To put it somewhere else, set POOKA_INSTALL_DIR:

POOKA_INSTALL_DIR=/opt/bin ./install.sh

Run ./install.sh again whenever you pull new changes.

Continuous integration

Projects made with pooka new already include a GitHub workflow, in .github/workflows/test.yml, that installs Erlang and Pooka and runs your tests.

If something goes wrong

Uninstalling

Pooka keeps everything in one file. To remove it, delete pooka (and pooka.cmd on Windows). Each project keeps its own build files in its build folder, and pooka clean removes them.

The lantern goes out, and nothing else in the house is disturbed.