2.7 KiB
RETRO FORTH
RETRO is a modern, pragmatic Forth drawing influences from many sources. It's clean, elegant, tiny, and easy to grasp and adapt to various uses.
Features:
- Open Source (ISC License)
- Portable (runs on a MISC-style virtual machine)
- Small source & binaries
- Builds into a single, self contained binary for easy deployment
- Sources in literate format, using a Markdown variant
Quick Start
For most systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, Linux):
make
You will need a standard C compiler and make. The retro-ri
binary requires (n)curses, but you can ignore any build/link
errors by doing:
make -kis
If you are building on an older Linux system and are running into problems, try using the alternative Makefile:
make -f Makefile.linux
Executables
Binaries will be placed in the bin directory.
The primary executable is retro. This is used for running the
examples and the Atua (gopher) & Casket (http) servers that
power forthworks.com.
The retro executable embeds the image into the binary, making
it trivial to copy and deploy.
This interface layer also extends the language with many new words and vocabularies, adds scripting, file i/o, gopher, and floating point math support.
The retro executable can handle a variety of command line
arguments:
retro -i
Starts the listener, a basic REPL for interactive use.
retro filename
This will run the code in the specified file, then exit. This
is also used to run programs as shell-type scripts using a
header line like #!/usr/bin/env retro.
retro -i -f filename
This will run the code in the specified file, then start the listener.
retro -h
Displays a summary of the command line arguments.
Source files for use with retro are written with code in
fenced blocks:
commentary here
~~~
code here
~~~
Anything outside the fenced blocks will be ignored.
Commercial Versions
I provide proprietary versions of RETRO for iOS and macOS.
These use a custom, dual pane editor-based environment and
some platform specific words and extensions. They do use the
same image and virtual machine as retro, retro-repl, etc.
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/retro-forth-12/id1170943580?ls=1&mt=8
macOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/retro-forth/id1317494014?ls=1&mt=12
The macOS application is also availble for free, though the source is not published.
Proceeds from these are used to pay for various project related expenses (servers, domains, hardware upgrades, and an occasional cup of tea).
Alternative Implementations
This source tree includes additional implementations in C#, JavaScript, Pascal, and Python. These are not officially supported, but are provided for your use if the C implementations will not suffice.