Installation

One command installs the brine tool into ~/.brine/bin and adds it to your PATH. Brine also needs a C compiler on your machine; run brine doctor afterwards to check that everything works.

Quick install

Linux and macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brinelang/brine/main/install.sh | sh

The script picks the build for your system (linux or macos, x64 or arm64), checks it against the release’s SHA256SUMS, and puts brine in ~/.brine/bin. It adds that folder to your PATH in your shell’s startup file (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile on macOS bash, ~/.config/fish/conf.d/brine.fish, or ~/.profile). Open a new terminal, or run the export line it prints.

Windows

In PowerShell (5.1 or later):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brinelang/brine/main/install.ps1 | iex

The script downloads brine-windows-x64.zip, checks it against the release’s SHA256SUMS, puts brine.exe in %USERPROFILE%\.brine\bin and adds that folder to your user PATH. New terminals see it; the current PowerShell session can use it right away. On Windows on ARM it installs the x64 build, which runs under emulation.

Then check the install:

brine --version

brine 0.4.0

Run the installer again to upgrade to the latest release.

Installer settings

Set these environment variables before running the installer:

Variable	Effect
BRINE_VERSION=0.4.0	install a given version (default: the latest release)
BRINE_INSTALL=~/.brine	where to install; the binary goes in $BRINE_INSTALL/bin
BRINE_NO_MODIFY_PATH=1	don’t add Brine to your PATH (the installer prints the folder to add yourself)
BRINE_DOWNLOAD_URL=...	where the release files are, for mirrors (default: GitHub releases)

Linux and macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brinelang/brine/main/install.sh | BRINE_VERSION=0.4.0 sh

Windows

$env:BRINE_VERSION = '0.4.0'
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brinelang/brine/main/install.ps1 | iex

Requirements

Brine needs a C compiler: gcc or clang, or MinGW on Windows. It uses it to build the runtime, to link your program, and for --release builds. The installer warns you if it can’t find one.

Linux and macOS

xcode-select --install       # macOS
sudo apt install gcc         # Debian, Ubuntu
sudo dnf install gcc         # Fedora

Windows

winget install -e --id BrechtSanders.WinLibs.POSIX.UCRT
# or
scoop install mingw-winlibs

To use a specific compiler, set BRINE_CC (or CC) to its name or path.

Check your setup

brine doctor checks each part of the toolchain and builds and runs a small parallel program:

brine doctor

Output on Windows

  ✓ brine            0.4.0 (windows x86_64)
  ✓ C compiler       gcc — gcc (MinGW-W64 x86_64-ucrt-posix-seh, built by Brecht Sanders, r1) 16.2.0
  ✓ parallelism      32 hardware threads
  ✓ local sockets    needed for `brine run --ranks`
  ✓ build + run      compiled and ran a parallel program
  ✓ debugger         gdb

A ✗ line says what’s missing. The debugger (gdb or lldb) is optional; you only need it for brine debug.

GPUs

GPU offload needs nothing at build time. If an NVIDIA driver or an Apple silicon GPU is present when your program runs, Brine can use it; otherwise everything runs on the CPU. There is no CUDA toolkit or SDK to install. See GPU offload.

WebAssembly

Building for WebAssembly (--target wasm or --target web) also needs wasi-sdk: unpack it and set WASI_SDK_PATH to its folder. brine run --target wasm runs the result with Node.js. Both are optional, and WebAssembly support isn’t in a release yet: build Brine from source to use it. See WebAssembly.

Supported platforms

Platform	Prebuilt	Native dev builds	GPU
Linux x86-64	✅	✅	NVIDIA (CUDA)
Linux ARM64	✅	✅	NVIDIA (CUDA)
Windows x86-64	✅	✅	NVIDIA (CUDA)
macOS Apple silicon	✅	via C	Apple GPU (Metal)
macOS Intel	✅	via C	–

“Native dev builds” means the compiler writes machine code itself, so dev builds are fast. Everywhere else, and for every --release build, it goes through the C compiler. See Platforms and Builds and backends.

Prebuilt archives

Every release on the releases page has an archive per platform and a SHA256SUMS file:

File	Contains
brine-linux-x64.tar.gz	brine-linux-x64/brine
brine-linux-arm64.tar.gz	brine-linux-arm64/brine
brine-macos-arm64.tar.gz	brine-macos-arm64/brine
brine-macos-x64.tar.gz	brine-macos-x64/brine
brine-windows-x64.zip	brine-windows-x64\brine.exe

The archive holds a single executable. Put it anywhere on your PATH.

Uninstall

Linux and macOS

Delete ~/.brine (or your BRINE_INSTALL folder), then remove the lines the installer added to your shell’s startup file: a # brine comment followed by an export PATH=... (or fish_add_path) line.

rm -rf ~/.brine

Windows

Delete %USERPROFILE%\.brine and remove its bin folder from your user PATH (Settings → System → About → Advanced system settings → Environment Variables).

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$HOME\.brine"

Build from source

The compiler is written in Brine, so the first build starts from the C that Brine generates for itself, the bootstrap seed bootstrap/brinec.c. All you need is a C11 compiler.

Linux and macOS

git clone https://github.com/brinelang/brine && cd brine
cc -std=c11 -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -w -Iruntime bootstrap/brinec.c runtime/brine_rt.c -o brine -lm -lpthread -ldl
./brine build compiler/main.br -o brine2   # brine rebuilding itself

Windows

With MinGW gcc or clang:

git clone https://github.com/brinelang/brine && cd brine
gcc -std=c11 -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -w -Iruntime bootstrap/brinec.c runtime/brine_rt.c -o brine.exe -lws2_32 -lshell32
./brine build compiler/main.br -o brine2

The first command gives you the full brine tool. The second has it rebuild the compiler from its Brine sources. A correct compiler reaches a fixed point: building again with brine2 gives the same C.

Next

• Your first project: brine new, run, check and test.
• A tour of Brine: the whole language, one example at a time.