The Mun Programming Language

Hello, fibonacci?

Most programming languages start off with a "Hello, world!" example, but not Mun. Mun is designed around the concept of hot reloading. Our philosophy is to only add new language constructs when those can be hot reloaded. Since the first building blocks of Mun were native types and functions our divergent example has become fibonacci, hence "Hello, fibonacci?".

Creating a Project Directory

The Mun compiler is agnostic to the location of a project directory, as long as all source files are in the same place. Let's open a terminal to create our first project directory:

mun new hello_fibonacci

This command creates a new directory called hello_fibonacci with the following contents:

hello_fibonacci
├── src
|   └── mod.mun
└── mun.toml

The mun.toml file contains meta information about your package, such as the name, version, and author.

Writing and Running a Mun Library

Next, open the src/mod.mun source file and enter the code in Listing 1-1. Mun source files always end with the .mun extension. If your file name consists of multiple words, separate them using underscores.

Filename: src/mod.mun

# pub fn main() {
#   fibonacci_n();
# }

pub fn fibonacci_n() -> i64 {
    let n = arg();
    fibonacci(n)
}

fn arg() -> i64 {
    5
}

fn fibonacci(n: i64) -> i64 {
    if n <= 1 {
        n
    } else {
        fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)
    }
}

Listing 1-1: A function that calculates a fibonacci number

Save the file and go back to your terminal window. You are now ready to compile your first Mun library. Enter the following command to compile the file:

cd hello_fibonacci
mun build

The mun build command compiles all source files in the project and generates the runtime assemblies required to run the code. After running mun build an entry point assembly is created at target/mod.munlib which can be used to run the code. Contrary to many other languages, Mun doesn't support standalone applications, instead it is shipped in the form of Mun libraries - recognizable by their *.munlib extension. That's why Mun comes with a command-line interface (CLI) that can both compile and run Mun libraries. To run a Mun library, enter the following command:

mun start target/mod.munlib --entry fibonacci_n

The result of fibonacci_n (i.e. 5) should now appear in your terminal. Congratulations! You just successfully created and ran your first Mun library.