PooLang

English | မြန်မာ

PooLang is being designed as a simple, compiled language for web backends and infrastructure. Its direction combines Go-like deployment, approachable syntax, and Rust-inspired explicitness without exposing ownership or lifetime syntax. The name Poo (ပူး) comes from the Burmese word for guinea pig.

Important

The current release, v0.1.11, is a legacy tree-walking interpreter. The compiled backend platform described in the roadmap is planned for v0.2 and is not implemented yet.

Project Status

Track	Availability	Purpose
v0.1.11	Available	Legacy Rust interpreter, executable examples, and checked library APIs
v0.2	Planned	Clean-break LLVM compiler, native runtime, package tooling, async HTTP/JSON, analyzer, and editor support
v0.3	Planned	Opinionated web application platform with data, auth, cache, queues, and framework tooling
v0.4	Planned	Protobuf/gRPC, microservices, resilience, discovery, and OpenTelemetry

There is no compatibility promise between the legacy syntax below and v0.2. See TODO.md for the decision record, milestones, and implementation gates.

Current v0.1.11 Features

• Integer, float, Boolean, character, string, vector, and map values.
• Immutable inferred or typed declarations and mutable bindings.
• Arithmetic, comparison, and, or, not, and otherwise expressions.
• if/elif/else, while, range/vector for, step, and return.
• Typed functions, structs, instance methods, and legacy struct inheritance.
• Built-in std, math, and time modules.
• Checked source/file APIs with Io, Parse, and Runtime errors.
• A Rust lexer, parser, type-inference pass, and AST-walking interpreter.

Traits are tokenized but are not a complete supported feature. PooLang does not currently provide native compilation, HTTP, JSON, databases, packages, gRPC, or an editor analyzer.

Installation

Current v0.1.11 packages and installers are published for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Homebrew

brew install shayyz-code/tap/poo

npm

npm install --global @shayyz-code/poo@latest

Linux or macOS installer

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/shayyz-code/poolang/releases/latest/download/poo-installer.sh | sh

Windows PowerShell installer

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/shayyz-code/poolang/releases/latest/download/poo-installer.ps1 | iex"

Build from source

Install a stable Rust toolchain, then run:

git clone https://github.com/shayyz-code/poolang.git
cd poolang
cargo install --path .

Running Programs

The v0.1 CLI accepts a Poo source file path:

poo path/to/program.poo

From a repository checkout:

cargo run -- examples/app.poo

Append --speed after the source path to print interpreter timing:

poo path/to/program.poo --speed

Successful top-level returns are printed as Result: <Value>. File, parse, and runtime failures are written to stderr with a non-zero exit status. The legacy CLI does not currently implement --help or --version.

Legacy v0.1.11 Syntax

This example is executable with the current interpreter:

use std::poutln;

poo message str = "ready";
mut total <: 0;

for i in 0..5 {
    total = total + i;
}

poof double(value int) >> int {
    return value * 2;
}

if (not false and total > 5) or message == "never" {
    poutln(double(total));
}

return total;

Expected output:

20
Result: Int(10)

Legacy declarations use <: for inferred types or name type = value for explicit types. Mutable declarations begin with mut; reassignment uses standard =. Functions use poof, typed parameters such as value int, and >> for return types.

Examples

examples/app.poo exercises collections, control flow, functions, structs, methods, modules, and inheritance:

cargo run -- examples/app.poo

examples/donut.poo renders a continuously animated terminal donut. Run it in a terminal and stop it with Ctrl+C:

cargo run --release -- examples/donut.poo

Both examples target the legacy v0.1.11 interpreter.

Releases and CI

SemVer tags drive the cargo-dist Release workflow. The current configuration produces checksummed archives for Apple Silicon and Intel macOS, ARM64 and x86-64 Linux, and x86-64 Windows, plus shell, PowerShell, npm, Homebrew, and MSI installers. Stable releases publish npm packages and Homebrew formula updates.

Pull requests currently run:

• The issue-link policy check.
• Rustfmt, Cargo check, strict Clippy, and the complete Cargo test suite on Ubuntu.
• The Oranda/mdBook site build and internal-link check.
• A cargo-dist release-plan validation.

Pushes to main rebuild and deploy the project site. Platform release builds run for version tags, not for every pull request.

Development

cargo build
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo check --all-targets
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test
mdbook build docs
mdbook test docs

Core Rust code lives in src/, executable language specifications in tests/language_specs.rs, sample programs in examples/, and documentation sources in docs/src/. Generated docs/book/ and public/ output is not tracked.

Every change starts with a GitHub issue and a branch from main. Pull requests must remain small, contain exactly one closing issue reference, use Conventional Commits, and are squash-merged only. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

PooLang is licensed under the MIT License.

Hand-crafted by Shayy