mnml
  1. mnml Docs
  2. Install
  3. Build mnml from Source

Build mnml from Source

Build mnml yourself with Zig, for when there is no prebuilt binary for your platform or you want to work on mnml itself.

Zig version

mnml builds with Zig 0.16.0, exactly. Zig is still changing from release to release, so an older or newer compiler is not expected to build it. The version is pinned as minimum_zig_version in build.zig.zon, and the release pipeline runs on nothing else.

mnml version Zig version
0.3.x 0.16.0

If your package manager ships a different Zig, use a static build from the Zig downloads page.

Dependencies

There are no system libraries to install. zig build fetches every dependency itself and checks each one against the hash in build.zig.zon: the terminal library (libghostty's ghostty-vt Zig module), the vaxis terminal UI library, Lua 5.4, and the tree-sitter grammars. The first build downloads them; later builds reuse Zig's cache.

Building

git clone https://github.com/chris-mclennan/mnml
cd mnml
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

The binary is zig-out/bin/mnml-zig. -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe is the same optimisation mode every release ships; a plain zig build is a Debug build, which is noticeably slower to use.

Run it on a folder:

./zig-out/bin/mnml-zig ~/src/my-project

A source build also puts the Jira and Bitbucket integrations and their offline test servers in zig-out/bin, so ./zig-out/bin/mnml-zig --demo opens the complete demo — a sample project, a stand-in Claude Code session and offline Jira and Bitbucket panes, in a throwaway home. See Try It First.

Installing your build

On macOS and Linux, ./run.sh install builds ReleaseSafe and installs the result as mnml under ~/.local (set PREFIX to change it). It refuses to install from a tree with uncommitted changes, so every installed binary can be traced back to a commit, and it will not overwrite an mnml that is not this program without --force.

./run.sh install --dry-run   # print the plan, change nothing
./run.sh install

On Windows, run.ps1 has the same install verb (Windows PowerShell 5.1 or PowerShell 7). It installs into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\mnml.

Running the tests

zig build unit        # the unit suite
zig build test        # the unit suite, then the end-to-end gate
zig build e2e         # the whole .test corpus

Every unit test and every .test script runs on a leak-checking allocator, and a leak fails the test.

Going further

If you want to work on mnml rather than just run it, read docs/CONTRIBUTING.md (the verification sequence a change goes through) and the README, which lists every zig build step and every ./run.sh verb.

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