Installing Factor locally

Learn how to install Factor locally to solve Exercism's exercises on your own machine

The Factor track uses Factor 0.101. Earlier versions are not supported.

You can install a stable or nightly build, or build from source.

Verify your installation by running factor -e='vm-version print' — it should print 0.101 or higher.

Stable

https://factorcode.org#stable-release provides stable binaries under the "Stable release" section.

Nightly

https://factorcode.org#development-release provides nightly binaries under the "Development release" section. These binaries are built from git, but only builds that pass are shown.

build from source

If you want the bleeding edge and even nightly is too old for you, then you will need a modern C++ compiler (GCC >=4.8 or Clang >=3.5), make, and curl.

With those simple requirements fulfilled, you can:

  1. Download the build shell script: here for Unix-likes / POSIX shells or here for Windows. Put it in the directory under which Factor should be installed. A directory called factor containing the codebase will be created.

  2. Run it like ./build.sh install, or .\build.cmd install on Windows. This will clone Factor's git repository, build it, and download a Factor VM image from https://factorcode.org. This process may take between 2 and 20 minutes, scaling with your link and clock speeds.

  3. You can now run the factor or factor.exe binary generated inside the factor subdirectory. Try factor --help for help. You can also access documentation from the command line, or by pressing F1 in the GUI Listener, which will open the help browser.

  4. In the future, use the build.sh or (build.cmd on Windows) inside the factor subdirectory to pull from git and rebuild in-place, and download a new VM image if needed.

The file structure may now look like this:

.
├── build.sh                   <- delete if you like
└── factor
    ├── basis
    ├── boot.unix-x86.64.image
    ├── build.cmd              <- use these from now on
    ├── build.sh               <-
    ├── core
    ├── extra
    ├── factor
    ├── Factor.app
    ├── factor.image
    ├── GNUmakefile
    ├── libfactor.a
    ├── libfactor-ffi-test.so
    ├── LICENSE.txt
    ├── misc
    ├── Nmakefile
    ├── README.md
    ├── unmaintained
    ├── vm
    └── work

You no longer need the top level build script, as in the future the downloaded one should be used.

Clone the repository and use make in that folder.

If make fails with an error about a non-present target, try make factor or, if you can read a Makefile, find the make target for your platform in GNUmakefile.

If that fails, open an issue on factor/factor containing the error -- the friendly developers will be happy to help.