Getting started

Prerequisites

You can use woua in two ways:

• In exaequOS: Use the prebuilt environment with everything ready to go—no setup needed.
• On your local machine: Install the required tools and build the compiler yourself.

In exaequOS

All prerequisites are preinstalled. Just open a terminal and start using woua!

exaequOS is a Web computer that fully runs in your browser, with all the tools you need preinstalled. No setup required—just open a terminal and start using woua!

exaequOS also includes a WASM WASI runtime (called wex), so you can run apps developed in woua directly in your browser environment.

On your local machine

You need two tools:

• wasmtime — WASI-compatible WebAssembly runtime
• wat2wasm — assembles .wat text modules to binary .wasm (part of the WABT toolkit)

Install them using your system package manager, or download official releases:

• Debian/Ubuntu:

  sudo apt install wasmtime wabt
  

• macOS (Homebrew):

  brew install wasmtime wabt
  

• Windows:
  • wasmtime: Download the latest Windows release from the official site and extract the archive. Add the folder to your PATH.
  • wat2wasm: Download the latest WABT Windows release from the Releases page (look for wabt-...-windows.zip), extract, and add the folder to your PATH.

Getting the source

Clone the woua repository from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/baudaux/woua-lang

Building the compiler

From the woua-lang/wouac directory:

cd woua-lang/wouac
npm install
npm run build

This produces wouac/dist/wouac.wasm.

Building the demos

You can build all the example programs in the demos directory with:

./build_demos.sh

Compiling a program

In exaequOS, you can use the built-in WASI runtime wex. In your project directory:

wex --dir . --dir /usr/lib/woua::lib /usr/bin/wasm/wouac.wasm hello_world.woua -o hello_world.wat
wat2wasm hello_world.wat -o hello_world.wasm
wex hello_world.wasm

On your own machine, you can use wasmtime. In your project directory:

wasmtime --dir . --dir <path/to/woua-lib>::lib <path/to/wouac>/dist/wouac.wasm hello_world.woua -o hello_world.wat
wat2wasm hello_world.wat -o hello_world.wasm
wasmtime hello_world.wasm

Your first program

(include io)

(defn main ()
  (printf "Hello, World!"))

Save as hello.woua, compile and run — you should see:

Hello, World!