Installation

Every installation provides these executables:

• yonac — the compiler. Compiles .yona source to native executables, object files, or LLVM IR. It never runs the result. Source is a file or - (stdin).
• yona — compile-and-run a file, stdin, or -e expression. Shebang target (#!/usr/bin/env yona). No arguments on a TTY starts the REPL.
• yona-repl — the interactive REPL binary; yona execs it when you want a prompt.
• yls — the language server (yls --stdio). See Editor and language server.

Packages (recommended)

Platform	Command
Fedora / RHEL	sudo dnf copr enable kovariadam/yona && sudo dnf install yona
Ubuntu / Debian	sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kovariadam/yona && sudo apt update && sudo apt install yona
Arch Linux	yay -S yona-bin
macOS / Linuxbrew	brew install akovari/tap/yona
Windows	Native x64 or ARM64 MSI/ZIP from GitHub Releases

Distro packages place the compiler sysroot (standard library sources, interface files, and the canonical runtime archive) under /usr/lib/yona or /usr/lib64/yona; Homebrew uses $(brew --prefix)/lib/yona. The compiler locates its sysroot automatically; --sysroot overrides it.

Verify the installation:

yona -e 'let fib n = if n <= 1 then n else fib (n-1) + fib (n-2) in fib 10'
# => 55

CMake package

An installed Yona distribution exports YonaConfig.cmake alongside yonac, the runtime archive, and standard library. Downstream CMake projects can use the compiler without hard-coding a sysroot or constructing a shell command:

find_package(Yona CONFIG REQUIRED)
yona_add_executable(app SOURCE App.yona)

See CMake integration for module builds, interface dependencies, and target properties.

macOS notes

The Homebrew formula builds from source against Homebrew llvm, lld, pcre2, and cli11 (Apple Silicon, Intel, and Linuxbrew). Wrappers on PATH set YONA_HOME and YONAC_CC so the keg-only LLVM is used when compiling Yona programs.

Tagged binary releases include a native Apple Silicon archive named yona-<version>-macos-arm64.tar.gz; the hosted CI/release matrix does not build a separate Intel macOS artifact.

Optional GPU support via MoltenVK:

brew install akovari/tap/yona --with-vulkan

Ubuntu note

PPA builds compile from source on Launchpad. If your series has no published package yet, build a binary .deb from a release tarball:

./dist/debian/build-deb-from-release.sh 0.1.3 amd64
sudo apt install ./dist/debian/yona_0.1.3-1_amd64.deb

Building from source

Prerequisites on all platforms:

• LLVM 22+ recommended (16+ may work when find_package(LLVM) succeeds)
• CMake 3.15+ and Ninja
• A C++23 compiler (Clang recommended)
• PCRE2 for Std\Regex. CMake uses a normal system package when present, otherwise its default dependency fallback builds pinned PCRE2 10.47; no vcpkg is used.

Fedora / RHEL

sudo dnf install llvm llvm-devel llvm-libs llvm-static \
    clang lld lld-devel cmake ninja-build pcre2-devel cli11-devel \
    libxml2-devel doctest-devel pkgconf

git clone https://github.com/yona-lang/yona.git
cd yona
cmake --preset x64-release-linux
cmake --build --preset build-release-linux

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install llvm-dev clang lld liblld-dev libpolly-dev cmake ninja-build \
    libpcre2-dev libcli11-dev libxml2-dev doctest-dev pkg-config

git clone https://github.com/yona-lang/yona.git
cd yona
cmake --preset x64-release-linux
cmake --build --preset build-release-linux

macOS

brew install llvm lld cmake ninja pcre2 cli11 doctest pkgconf

git clone https://github.com/yona-lang/yona.git
cd yona
cmake --preset arm64-release-macos
cmake --build --preset build-release-macos-arm64

Windows

Windows has native x64 and ARM64 presets. Use Ninja with the matching official complete LLVM archive — clang+llvm-*-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc for x64 or clang+llvm-*-aarch64-pc-windows-msvc for ARM64 — plus the matching MSVC toolset and Windows SDK. Extract it to a short path and set LLVM_INSTALL_PREFIX to its root (the directory containing bin, lib, include). A Clang-only installer omits libraries that find_package(LLVM) requires. If neither LLVM_INSTALL_PREFIX nor LLVM_DIR is set, Windows presets assume C:\Program Files\LLVM; LLVM_DIR, when set, must be C:\Program Files\LLVM\lib\cmake\llvm (the directory that contains LLVMConfig.cmake), not the installation root.

On a fresh build directory the Windows presets use clang.exe and clang++.exe from that complete LLVM installation. An ARM64 Visual Studio Developer PowerShell remains required to provide the matching Windows SDK and linker environment.

Tagged releases publish yona-<version>-windows-x64.{zip,msi} and yona-<version>-windows-arm64.{zip,msi}.

The MSVC Desktop development with C++ workload supplies the DIA SDK used by the official LLVM CMake package. Yona discovers that SDK before loading LLVM; if it is installed in a custom location, set YONA_DIA_SDK_LIBRARY to its diaguids.lib. Zlib is resolved through normal CMake discovery, with Yona’s pinned CMake source fallback enabled by default. No external package manager is needed for this setup.

See INSTALL.md in the repository for the full Windows walkthrough, GPU/Vulkan options, and troubleshooting.

Optional: GPU runtime

Std\Gpu works everywhere with a CPU fallback. For Vulkan execution, configure with -DYONA_ENABLE_VULKAN=ON and install a Vulkan loader (Fedora: vulkan-devel vulkan-loader-devel; macOS: MoltenVK via Homebrew). Details: Accelerators.

Next

Continue to the quick start.