The boo programming language (c) 2009- Rodrigo Barreto de Oliveira (rbo@acm.org)

Distribution of binaries available at http://www.sieda.com/de-wAssets/en/docs/products/Boo-distrib/.

This distribution contains contributions of Harald Meyer auf'm Hofe (harald_meyer@users.sourceforge.net)

• .NET 4.5
• Visual C++ Build Tools*

* Boo is built with NAnt, which must be buit from sources, which requires NMake, which comes with the Visual C++ Build Tools.

• Mono 4.2.x (4.2.4 is the latest and recommended)
• Bash

You can install compatible versions of the required tools into the build-tools directory, where the build scripts will execute them from, by running the bootstrap script.

The bootstrap script is a PowerShell script; however, it must be run from a x86 Native Tools Command Prompt:

# FROM A x86 NATIVE TOOLS COMMAND PROMPT
powershell .\build-tools\bootstrap

./build-tools/bootstrap

Building Boo requires Mono 4.2.x, which is not likely to be your "Current" version of Mono. To avoid having to switch your current version every time you want to work on Boo, you can specify the version to use when you run the bootstrap script. The build scripts will then use that version of Mono, regardless of your current version.

./build-tools/bootstrap [<mono version>]

To build the repository, run the nant script:

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\nant [<target>]

# Mac/Linux
./nant [<target>]

With no target specified, this will build the repository (code and tests) incrementally. To clean and build the repository from scratch, run the "rebuild" target. This will also cause the ast classes and parser to be regenerated (needs a java vm)

To run the unit tests that have already been built with nant, run the nunit script:

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\nunit

# Mac/Linux
./nunit

To build and test the entire repository, the same way the CI build does, run the ci script:

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\ci

# Mac/Linux
./ci

For a brief description of the project and its goals take a look at docs/BooManifesto.sxw.

src/ contains all the source code for the runtime and compiler components.

tests/ contains all the unit tests.

testcases/integration is a good source of information on the language features.

lib/ contains project dependencies such as antlr.

bin/ contains the latest version that passed all the tests and could be successfully used to rebuild the system.

To execute a boo script run:

booi <script> [args]

For instance:

booi examples/hw.boo	

You can also have booi to read from stdin by typing:

booi -

Additionally, boo also comes with an interactive shell that provides you with the opportunity to use the interpreter interactively.

booish

After starting the shell you may type in command "h" to display some hopefully helpful information on the particular abilities of this shell. The startup environment of the shell may be configured editing file booish.rsp that also resides in the bin/ folder (must be side-by-side to the program).

You can generate .net assemblies by using booc (either the booc.exe utility or the booc nant task):

booc -output:build/hello.exe examples/hw.boo	

If you want to simply see the transformations applied to your code by the compiler use the boo pipeline, run:

booc -p:boo examples/replace.boo	

Folder bin/ also contains support modules for the NANT and MSBUILD build systems. You will have to define environment variable "BooBinPath" in such a way that

$(BooBinPath)\Boo.Microsoft.Build.targets

points at the definitions of the MSBuild targets referring to Boo.

http://boo-lang.org/ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/boolang

See: https://github.com/hmah/boo/graphs/contributors

• Fix of issue BOO-1078 "Cannot use enumerations as attribute parameters."
• Version information on assemblies is now pasted into the native resources. Thus, Windows Explorer can read and display it.
• booish: describe() now looks for XML documentation of referenced assemblies.
• booish: Autocompletion offers suggestions in a scrollable list with one offer per row (better overview).
• booish: Solved some problems with managing input into the shell. Added mode to allow users to paste content into the shell.
• booish: booish.rsp now offers additional options to configure the startup behaviour of the shell.
• booish: Added means to add commands to the shell. Added booish.mod.os to demonstrate this. This module provides commands like "cd" and "dir".
• boo: range(-1) now is an empty enumeration (instead of raising an exception).
• boo: Operator "isa" now also works with structs. This is important to avoid exceptions on casts.
• boo: Constructors and destructors now do not require a "def" (but you still can write this). Keyword "def" is redundant here (not very wrist friendly).
• boo: Macro "property" now also works for static classes.
• boo: Added macro "getproperty" that keeps the setter private.
• boo: array(int, null) now returns null (without an exception). This spares some if-then when using array for casting.
• boo: Resolved issues #57 and #58.

If you want to paste preformatted lines of code into the console, you will have to turn off autoindention using the shell command "indent".

>>> indent
Auto indention has been turned off. User [SHIFT][RETURN] to leave the editor and execute the command.
-->

The prompt will show you whether autoindention will be done or not.

Please note, that complex input operations on the System.Console are error prone. There are certainly several things to do here that probably will never be done. You might experience problems when you enter lines of codes that are longer that span over more than two lines of the console's line buffer.