Installation

Donna builds native executables. That means even if you download a prebuilt Donna binary, your projects still need a few native tools.

You need:

• QBE
• A C compiler, such as cc, clang, gcc, or zig cc
• Git, when your project uses Git dependencies

The website installer will use the latest release:

curl -sSf https://donna-lang.org/install.sh | sh

Check that Donna is available:

donna --version
donna help

Donna projects usually live in a directory with a donna.toml file and a src/ folder. Create one and run the generated test suite:

donna new hello
cd hello
donna test

If QBE or a C compiler is missing, Donna should tell you before the build falls into backend noise. That is the standard we want: useful errors, not a mystery trial. Donna Paulsen would not accept a linker stack trace as a personality.

On Windows, the easiest path is usually zig cc. If that is not available, use another C compiler or WSL.

Dependencies

Packages are added in donna.toml.

[dependencies]
donna = { git = "https://github.com/donna-lang/donna_stdlib", version = ">=0.1.0 and <1.0.0" }

Use version for normal packages. Donna will look at Git tags and choose a tag that satisfies the constraint.

For exact builds, pin a Git revision:

[dependencies]
donna = { git = "https://github.com/donna-lang/donna_stdlib", rev = "fbaac2a" }

You can also target a tag or branch when that is what you mean:

[dependencies]
donna = { git = "https://github.com/donna-lang/donna_stdlib", tag = "v0.1.1" }
markdown = { git = "https://github.com/NikolasSkyl/markdown", branch = "main" }

Donna writes resolved Git revisions into donna.lock. Commit the lockfile for applications. For libraries, commit it when you want contributors and CI to use the same package revisions.

Refresh locked dependencies intentionally:

donna clean --lock
donna build