How to install Beef Language on GNU/Linux

🐮 A programming language for game developers and general productivity.

Beef is an open-source, compiled, high-performance language specifically designed for real-time applications like games, combining performance with productivity.

• Syntax inspired by C#, with manual memory management from C and C++, and modern ergonomics inspired by Swift and Go.

• Well-designed project with its own IDE (Windows);
  


• CLI compiler (Linux/macOS);
  


• Debugger;
  


• Code assistants;
  


• and Hot-compiling.
  

Beef is ideal for those who need rapid development and fine-grained resource control, especially:

• Game and Game Engine Developers (console, desktop, WASM).
  


• Projects requiring efficient debugging, hot-reload, and productivity-focused ergonomics.
  

Precompiled binaries are available for Windows—just download and run the .exe.

But on macOS and GNU/Linux distros, you’ll need to compile from source.

Below, we’ll cover the steps to compile and install on GNU/Linux distros.

Dependencies

First, you’ll need the following tools installed on your system:

• 
  CMake version 3.15 or newer
  


• 
  LLVM version 18 or newer
  


• 
  Git
  


• 
  LibFFI
  


• 
  LibEdit
  


• 
  ZLIB
  


• 
  zstd
  


• 
  LibCurl++
  


• and LibXML2
  

Example of dependency installation using APT:

sudo apt install clang-18 llvm-18 build-essential cmake git \  

  libffi-dev libedit-dev zlib1g-dev zstd libcurlpp-dev libxml2-dev  

After that, just clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/beefytech/Beef  

cd Beef  

./bin/build.sh  

Before tests, you’ll see:

[******************************]  

TIMING: Beef compiling: 37.2s  

Frontend time: 23.48s  

Comptime execution time: 3.67s  

Linking BeefBuild_bootd...  

SUCCESS  

Building BeefBuild_d  

[******************************]  

Beef compilation time: 41.44s  

Frontend time: 21.56s  

Comptime execution time: 3.49s  

Executing Command: ReadFile("$(WorkspaceDir)/../IDE/dist/IDEHelper_libs_d.txt", "IDEHelperLibs")  

Testing IDEHelper/Tests in BeefBuild_d  

After compilation finishes, test a Hello, World! via command line:

• Navigate to the binary folder:
  

cd IDE/dist  

• Create a new project:
  

./BeefBuild -new  

Output: Created new workspace in '/home/$USER/Beef/IDE/dist'

This will generate:

• 
  BeefProj.toml, with:
  

FileVersion = 1  



[Project]  

Name = "dist"  

StartupObject = "dist.Program"  

• 
  BeefSpace.toml, with:
  

FileVersion = 1  

Projects = {dist = {Path = "."}}  



[Workspace]  

StartupProject = "dist"  

• 
  src/ (empty folder)
  

To create a file in src/, run:

./BeefBuild -generate  

This will generate the build/ folder and Program.bf inside src/. However, it won’t contain a Hello, World! by default.

Edit the file: vim src/Program.bf and insert Console.WriteLine("Hello, world!"); inside the Main() function, like this:

using System;  



namespace dist;  



class Program  

{  

  public static int Main(String[] args)  

  {  

    Console.WriteLine("Hello, world!");  

    return 0;  

  }  

}  

Now run the file with -run:

./BeefBuild -run  

Output: Hello, world!.

Installation

Clean up generated files:

rm -rf src/ BeefSpace.toml build/ BeefProj.toml ../../.git ../../.gitignore  

Actually, you only need these directories:

• 
  📁 BeefLibs/
  


• 
  📁 IDE/
  


• 
  📁 IDEHelper/
  


• 
  📁 jbuild/
  


• and 📁 jbuild_d/
  

But all of them total 1.4GB (or 1.6GB with extras). If you prefer, just remove the test files (Hello, World!) and Git files.

Move to /opt/:

cd ..  

sudo mv Beef/ /opt/  

Create symbolic links for the binary and libs:

sudo ln -sf /opt/Beef/IDE/dist/BeefBuild /usr/local/bin/beef  

sudo ln -sf /opt/Beef/jbuild/Release/bin/libhunspell.so /usr/local/lib/libhunspell.so  

sudo ln -sf /opt/Beef/jbuild/Release/bin/libBeefRT.a /usr/local/lib/libBeefRT.a  

sudo ln -sf /opt/Beef/jbuild/Release/bin/libBeefRT.a /opt/Beef/IDE/dist/libBeefRT.a  

sudo ldconfig  

Test:

beef -version  

BeefBuild 0.43.6

Test a new project:

mkdir MyGameBeef  

cd MyGameBeef/  

beef -new  

beef -generate  

Edit vim src/Program.bf:

For CSharp-like syntax highlighting in Vim: :set filetype=cs

using System;  



namespace MyGameBeef {  

  class Program {  

    static void Main() {  

      Console.WriteLine("My first game with Beef!");  

    }  

  }  

}  

Run:

beef -run  

I tested the performance of a million-loop for loop with this code:

for(int i = 0; i <= 1000000; ++i){  

  Console.Write(scope $"{i}Ok\r");  

}  

Result:

1000000Ok  

real    0m6,767s  

user    0m2,717s  

sys 0m3,292s  

For more info, visit the official site: https://www.beeflang.org/ and the repo: https://github.com/beefytech/Beef.