Install Vx

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://vxlang.org/install.sh | sh

This downloads a prebuilt toolchain, verifies it against its published SHA-256, and unpacks it into ~/.vx. Nothing is written outside that directory and nothing needs root.

Then put it on your PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.vx/bin:$PATH"

Add that line to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc to make it permanent.

Supported platforms

Prerequisites

The installer checks for these and stops with the exact command to run if one is missing. It does not install them for you: a script piped into a shell should not quietly run your package manager.

LLVM 22 (macOS, and Linux before v0.0.3)

Vx lowers through MLIR, and shells out to mlir-translate, opt, llc and clang from LLVM 22 when it compiles. From v0.0.3, the Linux toolchains include these, so there is nothing to install on Linux. On macOS you install LLVM 22 yourself. The version matters — the MLIR C API changes between major releases, so LLVM 21 or 23 will not work.

# macOS
brew install llvm@22

# Ubuntu / Debian, only for a release before v0.0.3
wget https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh && chmod +x llvm.sh && sudo ./llvm.sh 22
sudo apt-get install -y libmlir-22-dev mlir-22-tools

libmlir-22-dev is the package people miss. It ships the MLIR C API and is not pulled in by llvm-22-dev.

On macOS, Homebrew’s LLVM is keg-only, so it is deliberately not on your PATH. You do not need to change that — the installer records where it found LLVM, and the vxc wrapper points the compiler at it directly.

z3 (optional)

Seam verification — proving that an asynchronous transfer has been made visible before the buffer is read — is discharged by shelling out to z3. It is opt-in behind --verify-seams, so a toolchain without z3 compiles and runs everything else normally; you only need it when you turn that flag on.

The binary is executed, so installing libz3-dev alone is not enough.

brew install z3          # macOS
sudo apt-get install z3  # Ubuntu / Debian

Verify the install

The installer compiles and runs a small program as its last step, so if it finished without complaint you are already working. To check by hand:

vxc --version

This prints the version, and for a release build also the commit it was built from, such as vxc 0.0.3 (f1fb0333). To get the commit in a build of your own, set VX_VERSION_WITH_COMMIT=1 when you run cargo build. Keep that line with anything you report: two builds of the same version can generate different code.

Then compile something. Note that --run propagates the program’s own exit code, so a non-zero exit status here is your program’s return value rather than a failure:

cat > hello.vx <<'EOF'
fn main() -> i32 {
    let x : i32 = 21;
    return x * 2;
}
EOF

vxc --run hello.vx

The last line should read:

[JIT] Program exited with code: 42

Installing a specific version

curl -fsSL https://vxlang.org/install.sh | VX_VERSION=v0.0.3 sh

VX_VERSION goes after the |, so that it is set for the sh that runs the installer.

Toolchains are unpacked side by side under ~/.vx/toolchains/, and ~/.vx/current is a symlink to the active one, so switching versions is a matter of repointing that link.

Uninstalling

rm -rf ~/.vx

Then remove the PATH line from your shell profile. The installer puts nothing anywhere else.

Troubleshooting

vxc: command not found ~/.vx/bin is not on your PATH. See the export line above.

Failed to run mlir-translate: No such file or directory The compiler cannot find the LLVM tools. This normally means LLVM was installed after Vx, so the installer never recorded its location. Re-run the installer — it will find LLVM and rewrite ~/.vx/current/etc/llvm-env.sh.

the Vx runtime library is missing The toolchain directory is incomplete, usually from an interrupted download. Re-run the installer.

Undefined MLIR symbols, or a crash on startup The LLVM on your system is not version 22. Check with llvm-config --version, and note that on macOS a bare llvm-config usually resolves to Xcode’s copy rather than Homebrew’s.

macOS refuses to run the binary Gatekeeper quarantines downloads from the internet. Clear the attribute:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/.vx

Next

• Your first program — write something real.
• A tour of Vx — the language in one sitting.