Installing 8th locally

Installing 8th

8th is distributed in an all-inclusive ZIP file, which contains versions of 8th for all the platforms supported by the version you downloaded. Your versions of 8th are licensed specifically to you and may not be shared.

Get the zip file

Starting from the Get 8th page,

• fill in the form with your name and email, and select the Free version. You must accept the 8th license.
• 8th-dev will send you an email to verify you. Click the link in the registration email.
• 8th-dev will compose a unique zip file for you and send you an email about it. Look for the "download here" link in that email.

Installing

In order to use 8th, you will need to unpack the zip file into any folder which is accessible to you.

There are a number of folders included in the zip:

Pro+ users: note that the encryption keys in the id.blob are unique to each specific version of 8th you download, and they are important for the purpose of building encrypted, deployable applications. If you move 8th outside of its distribution package and it can't find id.blob , then if you do 8th -v it will report custid: id.blob? as a reminder it can't find the identification information.

Regardless of the platform on which you develop, you can produce applications for any platform supported by 8th.

Once you have unpacked the zip file, you can run 8th directly. For example, if you installed it in /opt/8th on 64-bit Linux, then you should be able to type /opt/8th/bin/lin64/8th with whatever parameters you like, and it should work correctly. Do something similar on macOS or Windows.

Adding the 8th binary’s folder to your system’s PATH environment variable will allow you to simply type 8th rather than typing the entire path to it.

Using 8th

8th itself is a command-line program — it is not intended to be started by clicking on a desktop icon. You can create regular GUI programs with it which can be started that way, but the 8th compiler itself is a CLI (command-line interface) program.

If you are running on Windows, and using an MSys or Cygwin shell, then you may also need to use the freely available winpty program in order for your console mode programs to work properly. Recent versions of Windows 10 don’t seem to require that.

If you are running on MacOS, read this 8th forum thread.

The 8th command-line looks like this:

8th [options] [[-f] file...] [-e 'code'...]

Where the [-f] file option means “interpret the contents of the file”, and -e code means “interpret that specific 8th code”. Both options may be given more than once on the command-line, and the effect is cumulative. In other words:

8th -f first.8th -f second.8th

will interpret the contents of the file first.8th and then interpret the contents of the file second.8th . Note that if you want to just run one 8th file, you do not need to say 8th -f first.8th , you can instead just type 8th first.8th .

Here are all the CLI options 8th understands:

In general you should not need to use the -k , -r , or -s options; they are provided in case you find them useful, for example if 128K items on the stack at one time is too few (to be honest, you should change your algorithm if that’s the case...).

If you find you are using command-line switches often, you can simply use a “shell script” (on macOS or Linux), or a “batch file” (on Windows; also called a “command file”) to start 8th with the options you prefer.

You can also create an 8th source file in the app:datadir folder, named settings.8th . If it is present, the 8th REPL will load it at startup and will print a message to that effect. For security reasons, that file will not be looked for or loaded in a packaged app.

To quit 8th, do any of the following:

• Type bye and hit ENTER . That will tell 8th to quit normally
• Type 1 die and hit ENTER . That will tell 8th to quit abnormally and return the status-code 1 to the operating system
• Press the key Ctrl+C twice in rapid succession, or Ctrl+D once. Either tells 8th to quit immediately
• In a running application, invoking throw will cause an exception. If you’re running from the 8th console, you will be returned there in most cases; if you’re running a file or a packaged application, a message will be printed and the app terminated.

Running 8th programs

8th can run your programs in several modes:

Pro+ users: You can create encrypted applications to help deter hackers and other nefarious parties

In the latter two scenarios, your code must be in plain-text files (e.g. not a word-processing format). Any supporting files should be placed in the same folder as your code, or in a sub-folder of it. You can access those other files in 8th by invoking app:asset .

An “app” is a standalone program which runs on its own like any other program for the target platform, and does not need to be run by 8th via the command-line. The contents may be encrypted to help deter hackers, as mentioned above. The details of producing standalone applications may be found in the section on using the build tool.

Tip: if you’re running on macOS, Linux, or RPI systems, you can make your script run like a regular system command by:

• Making the file executable: chmod +x scriptname
• Make the first line of your code: #! /usr/bin/env 8th
• Ensure a relevant 8th executable is on your PATH

This will also work with packaged appdata, so if you used bin/build to create an executable you could use the appdata it created in the same manner by doing:

cat - path/to/appdata > newappdata
#! /usr/bin/env 8th<ENTER><CTRL+D>
chmod +x newappdata