MiniJuvix is a research programming language created by Heliax as a first step toward creating more robust and reliable alternatives for formally verified smart contracts than existing languages. The MiniJuvix language is constantly evolving, open-source, functional, and statically typed with special support for compiling validity predicates to the C language, which can be deployed to various distributed ledgers including Anoma.
The MiniJuvix programming language allows developers to write programs with a high degree of assurance that they will meet specific standards. This is due to the fact that several static analyses are performed during compilation, including, for example, scope, termination, arity, and type checking. As a result, functional programs, especially validity predicates, can be written with greater confidence that they will be free of runtime errors. Here are some examples of MiniJuvix programs.
The language features:
- unicode syntax
- parametric polymorphism
- inductive and parametric data types
- higher-order functions
- implicit arguments
- holes in programs
- axioms for non-computable terms
Additionally, the foreign and compile blocks syntax enable developers to compile a program to different backends including the C language. The MiniJuvix module system further permits splitting programs into several modules to build libraries which can be later documented by generating HTML files based on the codebase, see for example, the Minijuvix standard library’s website. For futher details, please refer to the MiniJuvix book which icludes our latest updates.
To install MiniJuvix, you can download its sources using Git from the Github repository. Then, the program can be downloaded and installed with the following commands. You will need to have Stack installed.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/heliaxdev/minijuvix.git
cd minijuvix
stack installIf the installation succeeds, you must be able to run the minijuvix
command from any location. To get the complete list of commands, please
run minijuvix --help.
In the following example a MiniJuvix file is compiled using the C backend. The result is compiled to WASM using Clang and then executed using wasmer.
NB: Set the WASI_SYSROOT_PATH environment variable to the root of the WASI
sysroot. See Installing dependencies for instructions on how to install the
sysroot.
cd tests/positive/MiniC/HelloWorld
minijuvix compile Input.mjuvix
wasmer Input.wasmYou should see the output: hello world!
The MiniJuvix language and related tools are documented in the MiniJuvix book.
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