Skip to content
<open-source>
Oeiuwq Faith Blog OpenSource Porfolio

boo-lang/boo

The Boo Programming Language.
Source code at GitHub https://github.com/boo-lang/boo
boo-lang/boo.json
{
  "createdAt": "2010-05-06T19:45:31Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "The Boo Programming Language.",
  "fullName": "boo-lang/boo",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "C#",
  "name": "boo",
  "pushedAt": "2022-07-21T09:42:58Z",
  "stargazersCount": 897,
  "topics": [],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-21T01:48:43Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/boo-lang/boo"
}

Build Status

The Boo Programming Language (c) 2009 Rodrigo B. de Oliveira (rbo@acm.org)

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

Windows

Section titled “Windows”

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

Mac/Linux

Section titled “Mac/Linux”
  • Mono 4.2.x (4.2.4 is the latest and recommended)
  • Bash

Build Tools

Section titled “Build Tools”

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.

Windows

Section titled “Windows”

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

Mac/Linux

Section titled “Mac/Linux”
./build-tools/bootstrap

Mac

Section titled “Mac”

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>]

Building

Section titled “Building”

To build the repository, run the nant script:

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\nant [<target>]
Terminal window
# 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
Terminal window
# Mac/Linux
./nunit

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

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\ci
Terminal window
# Mac/Linux
./ci

How to Start

Section titled “How to Start”

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

extras/boox contains a sweet little tool you can use to get yourself acquainted with the language.

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.

Running and compiling code

Section titled “Running and compiling code”

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 -

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

More Information

Section titled “More Information”

Boo development Google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/boolang

Boo community Discord: https://discord.gg/J4Guxadwma

Contributors

Section titled “Contributors”

See: https://github.com/boo-lang/boo/graphs/contributors