Quick Getting Started Guide.

Get pre-built binaries (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Latest version from CI

If you don't want to deal with building it yourself, go to github CI (click on the latest succesful run to get a list of binaries at the bottom). These are 64-bit for all platforms.

Note: if you're NOT seeing a list of artifacts at the bottom of each run, that may be because you're not logged in to github.

Now get https://github.com/aardappel/lobster (download zip). This has all the data files and examples. Place the binary you obtained in bin folder of the repo (not /bin).

Releases

There may occasionally be builds on https://github.com/aardappel/lobster/releases (lobster_<date>_<platform>.zip and Source code (zip)), but these are usually way behind using the most recent builds above, so not recommended.

Or, build it yourself!

Linux

Pre-Requirements: Git, CMake, a C++17 compiler, Mesa dev files (apt-get install mesa-common-dev).

git clone https://github.com/aardappel/lobster.git
cd lobster/dev
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j8
cd ..
bin/lobster samples/pythtree.lobster

Windows

Pre-Requirements: VS2022 Community edition or better, C++ desktop tools installed.

Get https://github.com/aardappel/lobster using your favorite git tool (best), or just download a .zip from there otherwise.

Open dev\lobster\lobster.sln, ensure Release is selected in the top bar, Build -> Build Solution, then close if no errors.

Mac

Pre-Requirements: Latest XCode & CMake.

Get https://github.com/aardappel/lobster using your favorite git tool (best), or just download a .zip otherwise.

From the terminal, in the dev folder, run sh build_osx.sh which will generate an Xcode project in the xcode-cmake sub-folder.

Open dev/xcode-cmake/Lobster.xcodeproj, ensure lobster > My Mac is selected as scheme in the top bar, Product -> Build for -> Profiling (to get a Release build), then close if no errors.

Alternatively from the terminal from the xcode-cmake folder:

xcodebuild -toolchain clang -configuration Release -target lobster

Running it

You now have a lobster executable in your bin folder. You can run this with any Lobster file as argument to run it, for example bin/lobster.exe samples/pythtree.lobster should work.

More Docs

For more advanced usage, including how to run it from an editor, check the rest of the docs