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Marcos Oliveira
Marcos Oliveira

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How to install Beef Language on GNU/Linux

#gamedev #csharp #cpp #programming

🐮 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:

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
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After that, just clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/beefytech/Beef cd Beef ./bin/build.sh
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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
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After compilation finishes, test a Hello, World! via command line:

  • Navigate to the binary folder: 
cd IDE/dist
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./BeefBuild -new
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Output: Created new workspace in '/home/$USER/Beef/IDE/dist'

This will generate:

  • BeefProj.toml, with: 
FileVersion = 1 [Project] Name = "dist" StartupObject = "dist.Program"
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  • BeefSpace.toml, with: 
FileVersion = 1 Projects = {dist = {Path = "."}} [Workspace] StartupProject = "dist"
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  • src/ (empty folder)

To create a file in src/, run:

./BeefBuild -generate
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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; } }
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Now run the file with -run:

./BeefBuild -run
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Output: Hello, world!.

Installation

Clean up generated files:

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

beef -version
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BeefBuild 0.43.6

Test a new project:

mkdir MyGameBeef cd MyGameBeef/ beef -new beef -generate
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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!"); } } }
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Run:

beef -run
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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"); }
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Result:

1000000Ok real 0m6,767s user 0m2,717s sys 0m3,292s
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For more info, visit the official site: https://www.beeflang.org/ and the repo: https://github.com/beefytech/Beef.

Top comments (2)

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nathan_tarbert profile image
Nathan Tarbert •

been cool seeing steady progress on tools like beef tbh it adds up over time you think habits matter more than luck for learning new languages long-term

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marcosplusplus profile image
Marcos Oliveira •

Thanks for the comment, Nathan! =)