• 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)

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 os module) will also have minor changes until they are stabilized in V 1.0. Of course, the APIs will grow after that, but without breaking existing code.

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.

This is the preferred method.

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

Note: On Windows, run makev.bat instead of make in CMD, or ./makev.bat in PowerShell. To build with Visual Studio, run makev.bat -msvc. If the bundled TCC bootstrap cannot be compiled or fails while building the next compiler stage, the script retries with MSVC, then Clang and GCC. Note: On FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly, and Solaris, install GNU make and run it as gmake. Note: On Ubuntu/Debian, you may need to run sudo apt install git build-essential make first.

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

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
make

That should be it, and you should find your V executable at [path to V repo]/v. [path to V repo] can be anywhere.

On macOS, make guards Linux-only prctl code in older bootstrap snapshots before streaming vc/v.c to the C compiler. The single snapshot stays unchanged on disk.

On Windows, makev.bat generates the first compiler stage as C and links it directly. This also works with older bootstrap snapshots whose process-spawn code is broken.

(Like the note above says, on Windows, use makev.bat, instead of make.)

Now try running ./v run examples/hello_world.v (or v run examples/hello_world.v in cmd shell).

• 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

This also refreshes the bundled TCC binaries used for fast C compilation.

# xbps-install -Su base-devel
# xbps-install libatomic-devel
$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
$ cd v
$ make

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
docker build -t vlang .
docker run --rm -it vlang:latest

git clone --depth=1 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 -prod -cc gcc -cflags -static -compress examples/http_server.v
with_alpine v -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

On FreeBSD, V needs boehm-gc-threaded and GNU make packages preinstalled. After installing them, use gmake to build V:

pkg install boehm-gc-threaded gmake
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
gmake

On OpenBSD (release 7.8), V needs boehm-gc and openssl-3.5 packages preinstalled. After installing them, use GNU make (installed with gmake package), to build V.

pkg_add boehm-gc openssl%3.5 gmake
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
gmake

On Termux, V needs some packages preinstalled - a working C compiler, also libexecinfo, libgc and libgc-static. After installing them, you can use the same script, like on Linux/macos:

pkg install clang libexecinfo libgc libgc-static tcc make git
pkg update
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/vlang/v
cd v
make
./v symlink

Note: there is no need for sudo ./v symlink on Termux (and sudo is not installed by default). For faster development builds, keep the Termux tcc package installed; V will use it by default when no compatible bundled thirdparty/tcc binary is available on the host.

The Tiny C Compiler (tcc) is downloaded for you by make if there is a compatible version for your system, and installed under the V thirdparty directory.

For regular non-production builds on supported hosts, V prefers a working bundled TCC, then a working tcc from PATH, before using the platform compiler. The system fallback is selected only when required V runtime artifacts are available, including the bundled libgc.a used by default glibc and Windows Boehm builds.

-prod builds never default to TCC, which cannot do their optimizations. On x64 Windows, without -cc, a -prod build uses MSVC when an x64 Visual Studio Developer environment is active (cl on PATH, with INCLUDE and LIB set; not for -o file.o), otherwise a clang that targets x86_64 MinGW, otherwise gcc. A native -prod build on another Windows architecture uses gcc. An explicit -cc always wins.

On macOS, -cc tcc -gc boehm uses a persistent bundled libgc.dylib store when the physical V installation path contains a comma. The store is under $XDG_DATA_HOME/v-tcc-libgc-v1, or $HOME/.local/share/v-tcc-libgc-v1 when the XDG variable is unset or empty. V creates the fallback directories with private permissions. An explicit XDG_DATA_HOME must already be absolute, user-owned, not group/world-writable, and have a safe, comma-free canonical path. Compiled binaries can depend on this store at runtime, so do not delete it while they are in use.

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

For production builds (using the -prod option to V), it's recommended to use clang, gcc, or Microsoft Visual C++. If you are doing development, you most likely already have one of those installed.

Otherwise, follow these instructions:

• Installing a C compiler on Linux and macOS

• Installing a C compiler on Windows

On Unix systems, it creates a v symlink in /usr/local/bin by default. To do that, run:

sudo ./v symlink

You can also pass a different directory, for example:

./v symlink ~/.local/bin

On Windows, start a new shell with administrative privileges, for example by pressing the Windows Key, then type cmd.exe, right-click on its menu entry, and choose Run as administrator. In the new administrative shell, cd to the path where you have compiled V, then type:

v symlink

(or .\v symlink in PowerShell)

You can pass a different directory there too, for example v symlink C:\Users\you\bin.

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.

• Atom
• CodeLite
• Emacs
• JetBrains
• Sublime Text 3
• Vim
• Vim/Neovim Runtime Files
• VS Code
• Zed

To bring IDE functions for the V programming languages to your editor, check out v-analyzer. It provides language server capabilities.

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
>>>

v self defaults to -gc none. Pass -gc <mode> if you need a different GC mode. On macOS and Linux, v -prod self uses a single production build instead of the three-pass PGO cycle.

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

When a project has a .vvmrc file, v <project> and v run <project> try to use the requested V binary (for example v0.4.6) before falling back to the current compiler.

In order to build Tetris or 2048 (or anything else using the sokol or gg graphics modules), you will need to install additional development libraries for your system.

The net.http module, the net.websocket module, and the v install command may all use SSL. V comes with a version of mbedtls, which should work on all systems. If you find a need to use OpenSSL instead, you will need to make sure that it is installed on your system, then use the -d use_openssl switch when you compile.

Note: Mbed-TLS is smaller and easier to install on windows too (V comes with it), but if you write programs, that do lots of http requests to HTTPS/SSL servers, in most cases, it is best to compile with -d use_openssl, and do so on a system, where you do have OpenSSL installed (see below). Mbed-TLS is slower, and can have more issues, especially when you are doing parallel http requests to multiple hosts (for example in web scrapers, REST API clients, RSS readers, etc). On windows, it is better to run such programs in WSL2.

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's sync module and channel implementation uses libatomic. It is most likely already installed on your system, but if not, you can install it, by doing the following:

https://github.com/vlang/ui

With V's vab tool, building V UI and graphical apps for Android can become as easy as:

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

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

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

https://github.com/vlang/gitly

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

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/. On Linux, make retries the portable thirdparty-linuxmusl-* TCC bundle when the host-specific bundle does not run on the current system. To rebuild the bundled thirdparty/tcc in place from upstream TinyCC on the platforms that have an in-tree build script, run make latest_tcc_source. Pass TCC_COMMIT=<hash-or-branch> to pin a specific upstream revision.

PVS-Studio - static analyzer for C, C++, C#, and Java code.

Please see the Troubleshooting section on our wiki page.