Getting Started

Let’s install the Par programming language.

At the moment, there are no pre-built binaries, or releases, so we’ll have to build it from source.

Par is written in Rust. To be able to build it from source, we’ll need to install Rust and its build tool, called Cargo.

The easiest way to do that is via rustup. The website instructs:

Run the following in your terminal, then follow the onscreen instructions.
$ curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

The next step is to obtain Par’s source code. That is located on GitHub. Clone it locally by running the following in your terminal:

$ git clone https://github.com/faiface/par-lang

Navigate to the newly created directory:

$ cd par-lang

Then install the executable using Cargo:

$ cargo install --path .

This may take a while as Rust downloads and builds all the dependencies.

This installs the par command.

A new par command should now be available in your terminal. It may be necessary to restart the terminal for it to appear.

Let’s create a fresh package:

$ par new hello_par
$ cd hello_par

This creates:

hello_par/
  Par.toml
  src/
    Main.par

The generated src/Main.par is a tiny runnable Par program. You can run it with:

$ par run

And you can type-check the package without running it:

$ par check

Par comes with a built-in docs browser:

$ par doc

This command is useful in three different situations:

Outside any package, par doc shows the documentation for the built-in packages.
Inside a package, par doc shows the current package together with its dependencies.
For a remote package, par doc --remote github.com/faiface/par-cancellable lets you inspect a package without manually adding it as a dependency.

The playground is a great way to experiment with code and interact with values through the playground’s automatic UI:

$ par playground

And the playground should appear:

Playground window

If all is good, turn the page and let’s get into the language itself!

In case of problems, head over to our Discord, we’ll try and help.

Par Documentation