Installation

A released Echo is two binaries: echoc is the compiler, epm is the package manager. There is no runtime to install beside them, and no standard library to put somewhere on disk. A released echoc carries the stdlib inside itself, so installing Echo means putting those two files on your PATH.

The one-liner

macOS and Linux. Windows is the next section.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/echolang/echo/master/install.sh | bash

That downloads the latest release for your platform and drops it in /usr/local/bin. It only reaches for sudo if that directory isn't writable by you.

Want it somewhere else? Set ECHO_INSTALL_DIR:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/echolang/echo/master/install.sh | ECHO_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local/bin" bash

Then check it worked:

echoc --version
epm --version

If those print version numbers, you're done.

Windows

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/echolang/echo/master/install.ps1 | iex

That drops echoc and epm under %LOCALAPPDATA%\echo\bin, and puts bin on your user PATH. Open a new terminal before echoc --version. The shell you already have will not see it.

The archive is a toolchain, not two files. clang, lld-link and a sysroot sit next to echoc, so echoc build does not need a separate LLVM install. x86_64 only. ARM Windows is told to build from source.

Or download echo-windows-x86_64-setup.exe from the latest release and run the wizard. The zip is there if you want to unpack it yourself.

Supported platforms

Four prebuilt archives. macOS and Linux are .tar.gz holding echoc and epm. Windows is a .zip with bin, lib and sysroot.

Platform	Asset
macOS on Apple Silicon	echo-macos-arm64
Linux on x86_64	echo-linux-x86_64
Linux on ARM64	echo-linux-arm64
Windows on x86_64	echo-windows-x86_64

That's the whole list. No Intel Mac, no Windows on ARM. The install script doesn't guess. It tells you there is no build for your machine and stops. On those machines you build from source, which is a real option but not a five-second one.

Native builds

echoc run needs nothing but echoc. It compiles in memory and executes. No linker involved.

echoc build shells out to clang to link the final executable.

On macOS that means the Xcode command line tools:

xcode-select --install

On Linux, install clang from your package manager. A released Linux archive also carries a musl sysroot, used when you want a portable static command: echoc build --target-libc musl. Linking is that flag.

On Windows, skip this. A release already has clang sitting next to echoc. A source build is the case that still needs LLVM on the machine, and that is the next section.

Skip the linker and run keeps working. build fails with a message about not finding it, which is a confusing error if you don't know to look here.

epm needs git

epm itself is self-contained, the same way echoc is. Adding or installing a package checks the tree out with git, so git has to be on your PATH. macOS already has one once the Xcode tools are there. On Linux, install it from the distro. On Windows, Git for Windows is the usual one. epm shells out to git the same way.

Building from source

If you're on an unsupported platform, or you want to hack on the compiler itself, you build it with CMake.

You will need:

• CMake 3.20 or newer
• a C++20 compiler
• LLVM 20 with the WebAssembly target (built against 20.1.4, opaque pointers). Homebrew's llvm 20 includes it. A custom LLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD that omits WebAssembly will fail configure.
• libzstd development headers

A WASI SDK is needed only to link a wasi binary, not to configure echoc or to echoc run. WebAssembly is that recipe.

git clone https://github.com/echolang/echo.git
cd echo
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --target echoc -j8

The binary lands at build/echoc. Copy it onto your PATH or just call it by path.

A source build does not embed the standard library. It reads the stdlib from the checkout it was built in, so keep the repository around. Or configure with -DECO_EMBED_STDLIB=ON to get a self-contained binary like the released one.

Editor support

echoc lsp is the language server: diagnostics, hover, go-to-definition, the outline, find-references, workspace symbols, signature help, completion, rename, highlights and inferred-type hints. Point an LSP client at it, or install the VS Code extension and set echo.echocPath at a source build's build/echoc if echoc is not on your PATH.

Setting your editor to treat .eco as PHP still works if you only want colour. The official grammar is derived from the compiler's own token list, so mv, guard and :$ colour as themselves.

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