Lykn

Installing Lykn

Prerequisites

You need two things: Deno and Rust (for the compiler).

Deno is the JavaScript runtime Lykn uses for running compiled output, testing, and the development workflow:

brew install deno

Rust is the language the Lykn compiler is written in. Install it via rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Installing the Compiler

cargo install lykn-cli

That’s it. You now have the lykn binary on your path — a self-contained compiler with no runtime dependencies.

If you prefer to build from source:

git clone https://github.com/lykn-lang/lykn.git
cd lykn
cargo build --release
mkdir -p bin
cp target/release/lykn bin/

Your First Project

lykn new my-app
cd my-app

lykn new scaffolds a workspace with project.json, a starter module, a test file using the @lykn/testing DSL, and README.md + LICENSE for publishing.

Verifying

lykn run packages/my-app/mod.lykn

If you see output, the compiler is working.

The Full Toolkit

lykn compile packages/my-app/mod.lykn       # compile to stdout
lykn run packages/my-app/mod.lykn           # compile + run from source
lykn build                                  # build workspace packages to target/lykn/build/
lykn test                                   # compile tests to target/lykn/test/ and run them
lykn test --docs docs/guides/ --fence lykn  # verify Markdown examples
lykn lint packages/my-app test              # lint Lykn source
lykn dist                                   # stage publishable packages in target/lykn/dist/
lykn publish --jsr --dry-run                # verify the staged JSR package
lykn check packages/my-app/mod.lykn         # syntax and analysis check
lykn fmt -w packages/my-app/mod.lykn        # format in place
lykn new project-name                       # scaffold a project

One binary for compilation, formatting, checking, running, testing, linting, package staging, publishing, and project creation. The Inquisition, one suspects, would have preferred something more complicated.