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Latest Release

The latest release of the compiler and standard library as of 20.06.2021 is v1.3.3-677-1

Binary releases of the compiler and the standard library are provided via our package repository, at https://gitlab.sac-home.org/sac-group/sac-packages/-/releases. We support most UNIX* operating systems, including RPM, DEB, and MacOS. Running on Windows is possible using WSL.

Other operating systems may have packages, see 3rd-party packages.

Please message use on the user mailing list if you encounter any problem.

Note, you can compile the standard library yourself if you prefer, see below.

Package Variants

We provide two types of packages variants, basic and full.

Which variant should I use?

For normal usage, the basic variant is sufficient to try out all of the features of the Single Assignment C language.

Basic package
— package excludes special features, like the GPU backend or advanced multi-threading scheduling.
— makes use of minimal external dependencies: gcc, libc, uuid-lib.
Full package
— package includes GPU backend and advanced multi-threading scheduling.
— more external dependencies: gcc, libc, uuid-lib, hwloc, cuda*
* CUDA must be installed as per the recommended guidelines of the distribution. Our packages are built using docker containers provided by NVIDIA, look there for their installation procedure.

3rd-Party Packages

We also have some user-contributed packages — as these are packages outwith the project, we can not provide any support on these. Please communicate with the package maintainers directly.

OS External Link
ArchLinux via sac-compiler-weekly and sac-stdlib-weekly
NixOS via sac-nix (thank you cxandru)

Please make sure that your system is properly setup to run SaC — at the very least you need to have a working C-compiler.

Note that on MacOS you must have Xcode installed and configured for command line usage. If you use brew or macports, this may already be done for you.

RPM (RedHat Based distributions)

The rpm release of the compiler is designed to be installed on RedHat based distributions of Linux (e.g. RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, etc.) using the dnf or rpm tool set.

Installation:

$ sudo dnf install sac2c-VERSION-RELEASE.rpm
or
$ sudo rpm --install sac2c-VERSION-RELEASE.rpm

DEB (Debian based distributions)

The deb package is meant to be installed on Debian based distributions (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) using the dpkg or the apt tool set.

Installation:

$ sudo dpkg --install sac-VERSION-RELEASE.deb
or
$ sudo apt install sac-VERSION-RELEASE.deb

Pkg (Apple MacOS)

The pkg is an installer that will place the SaC files in the correct location on your system. Symbolic links to the SaC binaries are created in /usr/local/bin for your convenience.

The SaC binaries are postfixed by their release type (production or debug), so there is a sac2c_p and sac2c_d respectively, sac2c is simply a link to sac2c_p.

Installation:

  1. Double click the downloaded pkg file
  2. A dialog box should appear that will guide you through the install process
  3. Confirm that you agree with our license, and click Install to install SaC
  4. The binary sac2c_p should be in your PATH

TAR.GZ (Unix-like operating systems)

The .tar.gz archive is intended for arbitrary installs, meaning that if you can't install sac2c using one of the other packages due to system permissions, you can use this archive to install it under you home-directory. The libraries of the compiler can be placed anywhere so long as the sac2c binary (and related) know where to find them. For this reason the archive provides the sac2c binary (and related) as source code to be compiled by the end-user.

For simplicities sake, an install script is provided. It supports several flags, but the most important one is -i to indicate where you want to install everything (for example ~/.local).

Installation of the compiler is as simple as extracting from the archive:

$ mkdir ~/temp_extract && cd ~/temp_extract
$ tar -xzf sac2c-VERSION-RELEASE.tar.gz
$ nano README                            # if you want more information on the install
$ bash ./install.sh -i INSTALL_DIR       # and thats it
$ cd ~ && rm -rf temp_extract

Windows 10

While we do not currently support a native Windows version, you can still use it through a virtualisation layer of your choosing. The easiest way to use sac2c on a Windows 10 system is to use Window's own virtualisation for Linux support, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). To do this, you have to do four things:

  1. You need to activate the developer mode of Windows. (Settings → Update & Security → For developers → tick the Developer Mode)
  2. You need to activate the WSL. (Control Panel → Programs → Programs & Features → Turn Features On & Off → tick Windows Subsystem for Linux)
  3. Go to the Microsoft Store and choose a Linux Distribution of your choice, e.g, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
  4. Download the basic version of sac2c and sac-stdlib that matches the Linux version you have chosen and install it. For Ubuntu, you download the corresponding .deb files and then run

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install sac2c-VERSION-RELEASE.deb
$ sudo apt install sac-stdlib-VERSION-RELEASE.deb

After that, you should have the sac system up and running: the SaC binaries are postfixed by their release type (production or debug), so there is a sac2c_p and sac2c_d respectively, sac2c is simply a link to sac2c_p.

Interested in contributing to the project? You can do so in several ways, by either telling us about bugs or by contributing code to the project.

Reporting bugs

Head over to the community page and follow the guidelines there on how to submit a bug.

Contributing code

  • Create an account on this site by registering,
  • and send an email to info@sac-home.org indicating that you'd like to have access to the compiler sources.