Building Ant#

Depending on what platform or features you need, the build process may differ. After you've built a binary, running the test suite to confirm that the binary works as intended is a good next step.

If you can reproduce a test failure, search for it in the
Ant issue tracker or file a new issue.

Table of contents#

• Supported platforms
  • Platform list
  • Supported toolchains
  • Official binary platforms and toolchains
• Building Ant on supported platforms
  • Prerequisites
  • Unix and macOS
    • Unix prerequisites
    • macOS prerequisites
    • Building Ant
    • Installing Ant
    • Running tests
    • Building a debug build
    • Building an ASan build
    • Speeding up frequent rebuilds when developing
    • Troubleshooting Unix and macOS builds
  • Windows
    • Windows prerequisites
    • Building Ant
• Meson build options

Supported platforms#

Platform list#

Ant builds and runs on the following platforms. Official CI builds are produced for each platform listed below.

Supported toolchains#

Ant is built with the GNU C23 standard (-std=gnu23). A compiler with C23 support is required.

Official binary platforms and toolchains#

CI binaries are produced using:

Building Ant on supported platforms#

Prerequisites#

The following tools are required to build Ant regardless of platform:

• C compiler with C23 support (GCC >= 14 or Clang >= 18)
• Meson build system (and Ninja backend)
• CMake (for the tlsuv subproject)
• pkg-config
• Node.js >= 22 (used to generate the JS snapshot at build time)
• Rust toolchain (stable) with cargo (builds the OXC type-strip library)
• Zig >= 0.15 (builds the package manager component)
• Git

Dependencies are vendored as Meson subprojects under vendor/ and are fetched automatically:

• aklomp-base64 0.5.2
• argtable3 3.3.1
• BoringSSL 297b11798a0ed6bc7736aa57328909a4afbbf67a
• crprintf HEAD
• google-brotli 1.1.0
• libffi 3.5.2
• libuv 1.52.0
• llhttp 9.3.1
• LMDB (OpenLDAP LMDB 0.9.33)
• minicoro HEAD
• MIR HEAD
• nghttp2 1.68.0
• PCRE2 10.47
• tlsuv 0.40.13
• uriparser 1.0.0
• utf8proc 2.10.0
• uthash 2.3.0
• uuidv7-h HEAD
• wasm-micro-runtime 92f40918bbfad35546a1512b10bd25eaa31add4d
• yyjson 0.12.0
• zlib-ng 2.3.3

Unix and macOS#

Unix prerequisites#

Installation via package manager:

• Ubuntu/Debian:

  sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip gcc-14 g++-14 ninja-build cmake \
    pkg-config nodejs npm
  pip3 install meson
  

• Fedora:

  sudo dnf install python3 gcc gcc-c++ ninja-build cmake pkgconf \
    nodejs npm
  pip3 install meson
  

• Alpine (musl):

  apk add clang lld llvm meson ninja cmake pkgconf nodejs npm \
    musl-dev \
    util-linux-dev util-linux-static linux-headers libunwind-dev libunwind-static
  

You will also need Rust and Zig installed. The recommended approach:

# Rust (via rustup)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Zig (download from https://ziglang.org/download/)
# Or via package manager if available

macOS prerequisites#

• Xcode Command Line Tools (provides Apple Clang):

  xcode-select --install
  

• Install remaining tools via Homebrew:

  brew install meson ninja llvm node
  

• Rust and Zig:

  curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  brew install zig
  

Building Ant#

To build Ant:

meson subprojects download
meson setup build
meson compile -C build

Alternatively, if you have maid installed,
you can use the task runner:

maid setup       # downloads subprojects + configures with ccache and lld
maid build       # compiles
maid run <file>  # builds and runs a JS file

To verify the build:

./build/ant --version
./build/ant -e "console.log('Hello from Ant ' + Ant.version)"

Installing Ant#

You can install the built binary using:

maid install

This copies the binary to the directory of an existing ant installation, or falls back to ~/.ant/bin/. It also creates an antx symlink.

Alternatively, copy the binary manually:

cp ./build/ant /usr/local/bin/ant

Running tests#

To run a single test:

./build/ant tests/test_async.cjs

To run the spec suite:

./build/ant examples/spec/run.js

Building a debug build#

A debug build disables optimizations and LTO, and preserves debug symbols:

meson subprojects download
CC="ccache $(which clang)" \
  meson setup build --wipe --buildtype=debug \
  -Doptimization=0 -Db_lto=false -Dstrip=false -Db_lundef=false -Dunity=off
meson compile -C build

Or with maid:

maid debug
maid build

When using the debug build, core dumps will be generated in case of crashes. Use lldb or gdb with the debug binary to inspect them:

lldb ./build/ant core.ant
(lldb) bt

Building an ASan build#

ASan can help detect memory bugs.

meson subprojects download
CC="ccache $(which clang)" \
  meson setup build --wipe \
  -Db_sanitize=address -Doptimization=0 -Db_lto=false -Dstrip=false -Db_lundef=false
meson compile -C build

Or with maid:

maid asan
maid build

Then run tests against the ASan build:

./build/ant tests/test_gc.js

Speeding up frequent rebuilds when developing#

If you plan to frequently rebuild Ant, installing ccache can greatly reduce build times. The maid setup task configures ccache automatically.

On GNU/Linux:

sudo apt install ccache
export CC="ccache gcc"    # add to your .profile

On macOS:

brew install ccache
export CC="ccache cc"     # add to ~/.zshrc

Using lld as the linker also speeds up link times:

export CC_LD="$(which ld64.lld)"  # macOS with brew llvm
# or
export CC_LD="$(which lld)"       # Linux

Troubleshooting Unix and macOS builds#

Stale builds can sometimes result in errors. Clean the build directory and reconfigure:

rm -rf build
meson setup build
meson compile -C build

If you encounter "file not found" errors for vendored dependencies:

meson subprojects download

If the build runs out of memory, reduce parallelism:

meson compile -C build -j2

Windows#

Windows prerequisites#

Ant on Windows is built using the MSYS2 MINGW64 toolchain.

1. Install MSYS2
2. Open the MINGW64 shell and install dependencies:

   pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-meson \
     mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake \
     mingw-w64-x86_64-lld mingw-w64-x86_64-nodejs git
   

3. Install Rust via rustup (select the x86_64-pc-windows-gnu target)
4. Install Zig

Building Ant#

From the MSYS2 MINGW64 shell:

git clone https://github.com/theMackabu/ant.git
cd ant
meson subprojects download
meson setup build -Dc_std=gnu2x
meson compile -C build

To verify:

./build/ant.exe --version

Meson build options#

Configure options are set via meson setup or meson configure:

Standard Meson built-in options used by Ant:

Example:

meson setup build -Dstatic_link=true --prefer-static