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zetavm/zetavm

Multi-Language Platform for Dynamic Programming Languages
Source code at GitHub https://pointersgonewild.com/category/zeta/
zetavm/zetavm.json
{
  "createdAt": "2017-04-25T06:26:09Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Multi-Language Platform for Dynamic Programming Languages",
  "fullName": "zetavm/zetavm",
  "homepage": "https://pointersgonewild.com/category/zeta/",
  "language": "C++",
  "name": "zetavm",
  "pushedAt": "2022-07-19T02:01:32Z",
  "stargazersCount": 640,
  "topics": [
    "interpreter",
    "jit",
    "jit-compiler",
    "language",
    "vm"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-10-24T00:26:52Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/zetavm/zetavm"
}

ZetaVM

Section titled “ZetaVM”

Build Status Build status Gitter chat

Please note that ZetaVM is currently at the early prototype stage. As such, it is incomplete and breaking changes may happen often.

Requirements:

Section titled “Requirements:”
  • GNU Make
  • GCC 5.4+ (Linux) or clang (OSX), or cygwin (Windows)
  • Optional: autoconf and pkg-config, if needing to edit the configure file
  • Optional: sdl2, if wanting to use audio and graphics capabilities
  • Optional: Python 2 is needed to run the benchmark.py script

Installation

Section titled “Installation”
# Clone this repository
$ git clone git@github.com:maximecb/zetavm.git


# Run the configure script and compile zetavm
# Note: run configure with `--with-sdl2` to build audio and graphics support
$ cd zetavm
$ ./configure
$ make -j4


# Optionally run tests to check that everything works properly
$ make test

Basic Usage

Section titled “Basic Usage”
# To run programs, pass the path to a source file to zeta, for example:
$ ./zeta benchmarks/fib.pls -- 29


# To start up the Plush REPL (interactive shell),
# you can run the Plush language package as a program:
$ ./zeta lang/plush/0

About ZetaVM

Section titled “About ZetaVM”

ZetaVM is a Virtual machine and JIT compiler for dynamic programming languages. It implements a basic core runtime environment on top of which programming dynamic languages can be implemented with relatively little effort.

Features of the VM include:

  • Built-in support for dynamic typing

  • Garbage collection

  • JIT compilation

  • Dynamically growable objects (JS-like)

  • Dynamically-typed arrays (JS/Python-like)

  • Integer and floating-point arithmetic

  • Immutable UTF-8 strings

  • Text-based [code and data storage format]!(/tests/vm/ex_image.zim) (JSON-like)

  • First-class stack-based bytecode (code is data)

  • Built-in graphical and audio libraries

  • Coming soon: built-in package manager

Zeta image files (.zim) are JSON-like, human-readable text files containing objects, data and bytecodes to be executed by ZetaVM. They are intended to serve as a compilation target, and may contain executable programs, or libraries/packages.

More Information

Section titled “More Information”

A recording of a talk about ZetaVM given at PolyConf 2017 is available.

For more information, see the documentation in the [docs]!(docs) directory:

  • [Overview and Roadmap]!(docs/roadmap.md)

  • [Design and Guiding Principles of ZetaVM]!(docs/design.md)

  • [Packages included with ZetaVM]!(docs/packages.md)

  • [Plush Language Guide]!(docs/plush_guide.md)

  • [Plush Bootstrap Process]!(docs/bootstrap.md)

  • [Execution Model and Semantics]!(docs/exec_model.md)

  • [Contributing to ZetaVM]!(docs/contributing.md)

  • [Creating your own Language with ZetaVM]!(docs/new_language.md)

There are also a few blog post about Zeta and its design.

For additional questions and clarifications, open a GitHub issue and tag it as a question, or join the ZetaVM Gitter chat.