Installing

LexerLang is a single binary. You do not need a runtime, a virtual machine or a package manager: downloading the file and putting it on your PATH is enough.

macOS and Linux#

curl -fsSL https://lexer.gurerlabs.com/install.sh | sh

The script detects your operating system and architecture, downloads the right archive, verifies its SHA-256 checksum and installs the binary to ~/.local/bin/lexer. It does not ask for administrator rights.

To change the install directory:

curl -fsSL https://lexer.gurerlabs.com/install.sh | LEXER_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh

For a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://lexer.gurerlabs.com/install.sh | LEXER_VERSION=0.1.0 sh

PATH#

If ~/.local/bin is not on your PATH, the script says so. Add it to your shell's startup file:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

That file is ~/.zshrc (the macOS default), ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile. Open a new terminal afterwards.

Windows#

In PowerShell:

irm https://lexer.gurerlabs.com/install.ps1 | iex

The binary is installed to %LOCALAPPDATA%\LexerLang\bin\lexer.exe and that directory is added to your user PATH. No administrator rights are needed.

Once it finishes, restart any other open terminals: a PATH change only reaches newly started processes.

Manual installation#

The download page lists every platform's archive, size and SHA-256 checksum.

# example: Linux, x86-64
curl -fsSLO https://cdn-lexer.gurerlabs.com/v0.1.0/lexer-linux-amd64.tar.gz
curl -fsSLO https://cdn-lexer.gurerlabs.com/v0.1.0/SHA256SUMS

shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

tar xzf lexer-linux-amd64.tar.gz
install -m 755 lexer ~/.local/bin/lexer

The archive contains one file: lexer (lexer.exe on Windows).

Binaries are built statically (CGO_ENABLED=0), so the glibc version does not matter; the same file runs on musl-based distributions such as Alpine.

Which archive#

If you are unsure of your architecture: uname -m on macOS and Linux, $env:PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE on Windows.

Building from source#

With Go 1.26 and make:

cd bin-proj
make build
./bin/lexer version

External dependencies are limited to two database drivers (pgx, go-sql-driver/mysql) and golang.org/x/crypto. All pure Go — no C toolchain required.

During development, to link the binary onto your PATH from the repository root:

make lexer-enabled      # builds and links ~/.local/bin/lexer
make lexer-rebuild      # rebuilds, keeps the link
make lexer-status       # installation + running servers

It creates a symlink rather than a copy, so rebuilding also updates the command.

Verifying#

lexer version

lexer 0.1.0

For detailed output use lexer version --full: it also prints the commit, build date and runtime version.

Next#

Your first server — a ten-line file and lexer serve.