Installation

Vesper provides an interpreter named vesper and a formatter named vspfmt. Both programs are built from this repository. Prebuilt files may also be available on the latest GitHub release.

Build from source

Requirements

• CMake 3.20 or newer
• A C++17 compiler
• Git

Clone the repository and configure a build directory:

git clone https://github.com/tajultonim/vesper.git
cd vesper
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

The resulting executables are located in build/:

build/vesper
build/vspfmt

On Windows, the files have an .exe extension:

build/vesper.exe
build/vspfmt.exe

Add Vesper to PATH

Adding the build directory to PATH lets you run both commands from any terminal.

PowerShell

Replace the path with the absolute path to your Vesper build directory:

$env:Path += ";C:\path\to\vesper\build"

This changes the current terminal session. To set it permanently, add the same directory through System Properties > Environment Variables > Path.

Bash or Zsh

export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/vesper/build"

Add that line to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for future sessions.

Check the installation:

vesper --version
vspfmt --help

Use without PATH

You can invoke the executables directly:

build/vesper examples/hello.vsp
build/vspfmt examples/hello.vsp

On Windows PowerShell:

.\build\vesper.exe .\examples\hello.vsp
.\build\vspfmt.exe .\examples\hello.vsp

VS Code

For syntax highlighting, autocomplete, formatting, and a Run button, install the Vesper VS Code extension from the Marketplace.

The extension does not include the Vesper binaries. It can use workspace builds, commands available on PATH, or paths configured through vesper.interpreterPath and vesper.formatterPath.

See VS Code Extension for the lookup order and settings.

Next steps

Continue to Getting Started to run a program, use the formatter, and learn the development pipeline.