Installing

Swarm supports Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It is recommended that you use a relatively large terminal window, e.g. 170 columns x 40 rows or larger. (To find out the size of your terminal on a POSIX system, you can type stty size at a command prompt.) If it’s not big enough, try decreasing the font size. You can read about and/or share recommended terminal settings in this GitHub issue.

Installing via binaries

Currently we have one binary release built on Ubuntu Bionic; it will probably work on any GNU/Linux. We hope to add MacOS binaries in the near future.

You can download the swarm binary and compressed data directory from the latest release. If you want to run the binary simply as swarm, you have to put it in one of the directories in your PATH:

chmod +x ./swarm          # make it executable
echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'  # choose one of the listed directories
mv ./swarm /my/chosen/bin/directory/

You will also need to extract the data directory to a local Swarm folder so the executable can find it:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/swarm/
unzip swarm-data.zip -d ~/.local/share/swarm

Installing from Hackage

If you can’t use the provided binaries, or prefer installing from Hackage, you should be able to install with

cabal install swarm

Currently Swarm builds with GHC 9.6 through 9.12.

If you don’t already have the cabal tool, first install ghcup, then run ghcup install cabal (if cabal was not automatically downloaded as part of ghcup’s installation).

You may need to add ~/.cabal/bin to your PATH; alternatively, you can install with cabal install --installdir=<DIR> swarm to have cabal install the swarm executable in a <DIR> of your choosing.

Installing from source

If you want the latest unreleased bleeding-edge features, or want to contribute to Swarm development, head over to the Swarm repository on GitHub for instructions on building from source.

Configuring your editor

Although you can write commands and definitions directly in the Swarm REPL, once you get beyond the basics you’ll probably want to use an external editor for writing Swarm programs. Swarm has support for external editors with syntax highlighting and LSP integration:

Editor with problem popup

See the editors folder for details on how to configure your editor. Currently, VS Code, Emacs, and Vim/Neovim are officially supported, but more may be added in the future. See this PR for an example of the process of adding support for a new editor.