Latest version is w/o interpreter

Help & Support
1

Noob here! Got a successful install, Thx
Used to Lisp REPLs etc
Tried `crystal i’ - No Joy! Interpreter support not compiled into the binary.

Is there a package that includes it? TIA

2

I think you still have to build Crystal w/ some flags still. (This might be old/obsolete info.) See also: Crystal's interpreter – A very special holiday present - The Crystal Programming Language

3

I’ve had limited success with the interpreter in this docker image:

docker run --rm -it 84codes/crystal:1.7.2-ubuntu-22.04 i

but some things like require "http/client" are broken.

4

The official release binaries at Releases · crystal-lang/crystal · GitHub are not built with interpreter support. This has technical reasons: We’re distributing statically linked binaries, but the full functionality of the interpreter for loading libraries does not work with static musl libc.

If you want to try the interpreter, you can either pull a 3rd party package that includes interpreter support (for example from homebrew) or build the compiler yourself.

Note that the compiler is still an experimental features and many things do not work.
A workaround for the issue with http/client is to write that require to a file and then run that file in the interpreter. You can place a debugger call in that file to enter a REPL.

5

Thanks for your input!

Is this the file I need to do this?
https://artifacts.crystal-lang.org/dist/crystal-nightly-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

6

Thx for the heads up!

7

Thx! Read the article. Will try to build from source using interpreter=1 with `make’

8

I just git cloned crystal. I’ll go from there.