Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Environment

Welcome to the first chapter of the Unofficial Bend Programming Language Guide. This chapter will guide you through setting up your development environment to start coding in Bend. By the end of this chapter, you’ll have the tools you need to write, compile, and run Bend programs on your machine.

Installing Bend

Before we can start writing Bend code, we need to install the Bend compiler and its runtime environment. Bend is built on top of Rust, so you’ll need to have Rust installed on your system. Here’s how you can get everything set up:

Step 1: Install Rust

Bend requires the Rust programming language’s nightly version. To install Rust, follow these steps:

  1. Visit the Rust website at https://www.rust-lang.org/.
  2. Follow the instructions to download and install rustup, which is Rust’s installation and version management tool.
  3. Once rustup is installed, open a terminal and run the following command to install the nightly version of Rust:
rustup install nightly
  1. Make Rust nightly your default version by running:
rustup default nightly

Step 2: Install Bend

With Rust set up, you can now install Bend. Open a terminal and run the following commands:

cargo +nightly install hvm
cargo +nightly install bend-lang

This will install both the HVM2 runtime and Bend language compiler.

Step 3: Verify Installation

To ensure that Bend has been installed correctly, run:

bend --help

You should see a list of available commands and options for the Bend compiler.

Editor and IDE Recommendations

While you can write Bend code in any text editor, using an editor with Rust support will make your life easier due to syntax highlighting and other helpful features. Here are some recommendations:

  • Visual Studio Code with the Rust extension
  • IntelliJ IDEA with the Rust plugin
  • Sublime Text with Rust Enhanced package

Setting Up Your First Project

Create a new directory for your Bend project and navigate into it:

mkdir bend_project
cd bend_project

Inside this directory, create a new file named main.bend which will be our entry point for Bend programs.

touch main.bend

Open main.bend in your text editor and type in the following code:

# main.bend
def main():
  return "Hello, Bend!"

Compiling and Running Your Code

To compile and run your Bend program, you’ll use the bend command followed by the run subcommand and the file name:

bend run main.bend

You should see the output Hello, Bend! in your terminal.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully set up your Bend development environment, written a simple program, and executed it. In the next chapter, we’ll dive into the basics of the Bend programming language and start writing some real code.

This concludes Chapter 1 of the guide. Make sure to follow each step carefully to ensure a smooth setup process. Happy coding in Bend!