Running Rascal on the Commandline

rascal-0.40.17

After downloading the jar you can immediately run the RascalShell like so:

test-project $ java -jar ~/Downloads/rascal-0.26.5.jar 
Version: 0.26.5
INFO: detected |lib://rascal| at |jar+file:///Users/jurgenv/Downloads/rascal-0.26.5.jar!/|
rascal>import IO;
INFO: resolved |lib://rascal| at |jar+file:///Users/jurgenv/Downloads/rascal-0.26.5.jar!/|
Loading module |lib://rascal/IO.rsc|
Loading module |lib://rascal/Exception.rsc|
ok
rascal>println("Hello commandline!")
Hello commandline!
ok
rascal>

Some people find it practical to wrap the jar command using a shell script:

#! /bin/bash
exec java -jar /Users/jurgenv/Downloads/rascal-0.26.5.jar $*

Saving this to rascal.sh you can use it as follows:

test-project $ ./rascal.sh 
Version: 0.26.5
INFO: detected |lib://rascal| at |jar+file:///Users/jurgenv/Downloads/rascal-0.26.5.jar!/|
rascal>

Similarly you could create a PowerShell or Batch script on Windows to wrap the call to the JVM.

It makes sense to create a Rascal project and start the REPL from there. The REPL will automatically pick up the pom.xml and RASCAL.MF files if it can find them in (a parent of) the current working directory, and configure itself accordingly.