Installation

Check your computer

Turf runs on four kinds of computer. Find yours in the table:

Run the installer

Open a terminal and pick the tab for your computer. Copy the command (use the button in the corner), paste it into the terminal and press Enter.

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

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

irm https://turflang.org/install.ps1 | iex

What the installer does

It’s a good habit to know what a command does before you run it. The installer prints each step as it goes. On Linux and macOS there are five:

1. Looks up the release

   Finds the newest version of Turf, and the download made for your kind of computer.

2. Downloads the archive

   An archive is lots of files packed into one, like a zip file.

3. Checks the download

   Compares the download’s SHA-256 fingerprint with the one the release lists. If they don’t match, or the check can’t run, it stops and installs nothing. This catches a broken or cut-short download.

4. Unpacks it

   Opens the archive into ~/.turf.

5. Checks the compiler starts, and adds it to your PATH

   Makes sure turf really runs. Then it adds one clearly marked block to your shell’s start-up file, so the turf command works in every new terminal.

The Windows installer does the same job in four steps, and adds Turf to your user PATH instead of a start-up file. When they finish, both suggest something to try: turf new hello, then cd hello, then turf run.

What is PATH?

When you type a command like turf, the terminal has to find the program with that name. It looks through a list of folders called the PATH, one after another, like checking the shelves of a library in order. The installer adds Turf’s bin folder, where the turf program lives, to that list.

Check it works

In your new terminal, type:

turf version

You should see something like this. Your version numbers and folders will be your own:

$ turf version
turf 1.0.0  (needs turfc interface 1.1+)
turfc 2.0.0  (interface 1.7, /opt/turf/bin/turfc)
  llvm 22.1.8
  runtime turf_rt_abi_2_0
  root /opt/turf
  linker system-cc
  smart built-in

There are two version numbers because Turf is really two programs working as a team:

• turf

  The command you type. It understands projects, runs your tests and drives the compiler for you.

• turfc

  The compiler itself, which does the translating. You never need to type it: turf finds it and runs it for you.

If turf version printed its versions, you’re ready: in the next guide you’ll write your first program and run it.

If something goes wrong

“turf: command not found”

The terminal can’t find turf on its PATH. Try these, in order:

1. Close the terminal and open a new one. This fixes it almost every time.
2. On Linux or macOS, to use Turf in the terminal you already have open, run the line the installer printed at the end. For the usual folder it is export PATH="$HOME/.turf/bin:$PATH".
3. The installer knows the zsh, bash and fish shells. If you use a different one, it tells you which file it put the PATH line in. If your shell doesn’t read that file, add ~/.turf/bin to your PATH yourself.

Other problems

Installer options

Most people never need these. The installer takes a few options:

To use an option on Linux or macOS, save the installer to a file first, then run it with the options you want:

curl -fsSL https://turflang.org/install.sh -o install.shsh install.sh --version v2.0.0 --prefix ~/tools/turf

A piped irm | iex on Windows can’t take options either. Set the environment variables TURF_INSTALL_VERSION, TURF_INSTALL_DIR or TURF_INSTALL_SMART=1 first, or save the script and run it with the options above.

Uninstalling

Run the installer again with --uninstall (on Windows, -Uninstall). It removes exactly what it added, and never touches your projects, the package cache, or a model you put in models/.

Other ways to install

By hand

Download the archive for your computer from the Download page, unpack it anywhere, and run bin/turf, or put the bin/ folder on your PATH. The archive is a single folder:

There’s nothing else to set up. The compiler finds lib/ by looking next to itself, even through shortcuts (symlinks).

The -smart build

Every release comes in two flavours: the plain one, and a -smart one. The smart build is the same compiler plus what --smart needs. --smart is an optional helper: when the compiler finds an error it can’t fix by itself, it asks a small language model (a kind of AI) running on your own computer to suggest a fix. Turf only shows a suggestion after checking that it really removes the error. No model is included or downloaded: you choose one and put it in the models/ folder of your install.

From source

You can also build Turf from its source code. You need LLVM 22, CMake 3.20 or newer and a C++20 compiler (Clang is recommended), plus Go 1.26 or newer for the turf command.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/turf-lang/turf-langcd turf-lang./scripts/cmake_build.sh --release./scripts/install/dev_install.sh

The last line links turf into ~/.local/bin. The README lists every option.