Installing and using Pipefish

Installation

To install Pipefish, download and unzip the Pipefish repository, then install Go, and then in your terminal go into the main Pipefish folder and go build. You now have a working copy of Pipefish. Start using it with ./pipefish tui to open up the TUI, the Text User Interface; the first time you do this it will take a second or two to build some auxiliary files.

And then you will see something like this in your terminal:

  ╔═════════════♥═════════════╗
  ║  Pipefish, version 0.4.x  ║
  ╚═════════════♥═════════════╝

→ 

This is a REPL. Even though no service is running, it will still evaluate expressions in Pipefish.

→ 2 + 2
4
→ len "petunia"
7
→

You can stop it with hub quit. We will discuss what the hub is later on.

How best to use Pipefish

We have supplied Pipefish with a VSCode extension which highlights Pipefish code and takes care of indentation for you. You can add this to VSCode by copying the pipefish-highlighter folder of the distribution to your <user home>/.vscode/extensions folder. If VSCode is already running, it may be necessary to restart it.

We intend to add support for other editors, but until then, the best way to code in Pipefish is probably to edit your scripts in VSCode while running Pipefish in a terminal in the bottom panel; your tastes may of course differ.

If you are using VSCode for the first time, note that it ships with autosave turned off. We recommend that you turn it on.