Key Features of V

• Simplicity: the language can be learned over the course of a weekend
• Fast compilation: ≈110k loc/s with a Clang backend, ≈500k loc/s with native and tcc backends (Intel i5-7500, SSD, no optimization) (demo video)
• Easy to develop: V compiles itself in less than a second
• Performance: as fast as C (V's main backend compiles to human-readable C)
• Safety: no null, no globals, no undefined behavior (wip), immutability by default
• C to V translation (Translating DOOM demo video)
• Hot code reloading
• Flexible memory management. GC by default, manual via
  v -gc none
  , arena allocation via
  v -prealloc
  , autofree via
  v -autofree
  (autofree demo video).
• Cross-platform UI library
• Built-in graphics library
• Easy cross-compilation
• REPL
• Built-in ORM
• Built-in web framework
• C and JavaScript backends
• Great for writing low-level software (Vinix OS)

Stability, future changes, post 1.0 freeze

Despite being at an early development stage, the V language is relatively stable, and doesn't change often. But there will be changes before 1.0. Most changes in the syntax are handled via vfmt automatically.

The V core APIs (primarily the

After the 1.0 release V is going to be in the "feature freeze" mode. That means no breaking changes in the language, only bug fixes and performance improvements. Similar to Go.

Will there be V 2.0? Not within a decade after 1.0, perhaps not ever.

To sum it up, unlike many other languages, V is not going to be always changing, with new features introduced and old features modified. It is always going to be a small and simple language, very similar to the way it is right now.

Installing V from source

--> (this is the preferred method)

Linux, macOS, Windows, *BSD, Solaris, WSL, etc.

Usually, installing V is quite simple if you have an environment that already has a functional

Note: On Windows, run

To get started, execute the following in your terminal/shell:

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
make

That should be it, and you should find your V executable at

(Like the note above says, on Windows, use

Now try running

• Trouble? Please see the notes above, and link to Installation Issues for help.

Note: V is being constantly updated. To update V to its latest version, simply run:

v up

[!NOTE] If you run into any trouble, or you have a different operating system or Linux distribution that doesn't install or work immediately, please see Installation Issues and search for your OS and problem.

If you can't find your problem, please add it to an existing discussion if one exists for your OS, or create a new one if a main discussion doesn't yet exist for your OS.

C compiler

The Tiny C Compiler (tcc) is downloaded for you by

This compiler is very fast, but does almost no optimizations. It is best for development builds.

For production builds (using the

Otherwise, follow these instructions:

• Installing a C compiler on Linux and macOS

• Installing a C compiler on Windows

Symlinking

[!NOTE] It is highly recommended, that you put V on your PATH. That saves you the effort to type in the full path to your v executable every time. V provides a convenience

v symlink

command to do that more easily.

On Unix systems, it creates a

sudo ./v symlink

On Windows, start a new shell with administrative privileges, for example by pressing the Windows Key, then type

v symlink

(or

That will make V available everywhere, by adding it to your PATH. Please restart your shell/editor after that, so that it can pick up the new PATH variable.

[!NOTE] There is no need to run

v symlink

more than once - v will still be available, even after

v up

, restarts, and so on. You only need to run it again if you decide to move the V repo folder somewhere else.

Void Linux

# xbps-install -Su base-devel
# xbps-install libatomic-devel
$ git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
$ cd v
$ make

Docker

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
docker build -t vlang .
docker run --rm -it vlang:latest

Docker with Alpine/musl

git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
docker build -t vlang_alpine - < Dockerfile.alpine
alias with_alpine='docker run -u 1000:1000 --rm -it -v .:/src -w /src vlang_alpine:latest'

Compiling static executables, ready to be copied to a server, that is running another linux distro, without dependencies:

with_alpine v -skip-unused -prod -cc gcc -cflags -static -compress examples/http_server.v
with_alpine v -skip-unused -prod -cc gcc -cflags -static -compress -gc none examples/hello_world.v
ls -la examples/http_server examples/hello_world
file   examples/http_server examples/hello_world
examples/http_server: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, no section header
examples/hello_world: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, no section header

You should see something like this:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  16612 May 27 17:07 examples/hello_world
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 335308 May 27 17:07 examples/http_server

Termux/Android

On Termux, V needs some packages preinstalled - a working C compiler, also

pkg install clang libexecinfo libgc libgc-static make git
git clone https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
make

Editor/IDE Plugins

To bring IDE functions for the V programming languages to your editor, check out v-analyzer. It provides a VS Code extension and language server capabilities for other editors.

The plugin for JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, CLion, GoLand, etc.) also offers a great development experience with V. You can find all features in its documentation.

Other Plugins:

• Vim plugins
• Emacs plugins
• Sublime Text 3 plugins
• Atom plugins

Testing and running the examples

Make sure V can compile itself:

$ v self
$ v
V 0.3.x
Use Ctrl-C or `exit` to exit

>>> println('hello world')
hello world
>>>

cd examples
v hello_world.v && ./hello_world    # or simply
v run hello_world.v                 # this builds the program and runs it right away

v run word_counter/word_counter.v word_counter/cinderella.txt
v run news_fetcher.v
v run tetris/tetris.v

In order to build Tetris or 2048 (or anything else using

V net.http, net.websocket,

v install

The net.http module, the net.websocket module, and the

To install OpenSSL on non-Windows systems:

On Windows, OpenSSL is simply hard to get working correctly. The instructions here may (or may not) help.

V sync

V's

V UI

https://github.com/vlang/ui

Android graphical apps

With V's

./vab /path/to/v/examples/2048

https://github.com/vlang/vab.

Developing web applications

Check out the Building a simple web blog tutorial and Gitly, a light and fast alternative to GitHub/GitLab:

https://github.com/vlang/gitly

Vinix, an OS/kernel written in V

V is great for writing low-level software like drivers and kernels. Vinix is an OS/kernel that already runs bash, GCC, V, and nano.

https://github.com/vlang/vinix

Acknowledgement

V thanks Fabrice Bellard for his original work on the TCC - Tiny C Compiler. Note the TCC website is old; the current TCC repository can be found here. V utilizes pre-built TCC binaries located at https://github.com/vlang/tccbin/.

Troubleshooting

Please see the Troubleshooting section on our wiki page.