Install fennel with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• fennel

Project history

The public GitHub repository dates to 2016, while the project's release history records early public releases beginning with 0.1.0 in November 2018. The language developed around the idea that Lua's runtime and embedding story could be paired with Lisp syntax, macros, destructuring, pattern matching, and a stricter approach to accidental globals.

Fennel reached 1.0.0 in December 2021, after several years of 0.x releases. Its changelog shows steady post-1.0 language and tooling work through the 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 series, including compiler API additions, REPL improvements, macro-related changes, better source-map-aware debugging helpers, and compatibility work across Lua versions.

Adoption history

Fennel's adoption path has been typical of a niche language with strong package-manager culture: source builds and a self-contained executable first, then distribution through language and OS package channels. Homebrew packages it as `fennel`, and the input package metadata also records packages in apk, Debian, Fedora, and Arch ecosystems.

The project documentation emphasizes a live browser REPL, a page for inspecting generated Lua, IRC and Matrix community channels, a mailing list, and a wiki. That gives Fennel a small but durable language-community footprint rather than the adoption profile of a general-purpose mainstream runtime.

How it is used

Users run `fennel` as a compiler, REPL, and scripting tool, or embed the one-file library into Lua-hosted applications. The README highlights that Fennel code can call Lua libraries directly and can be compiled so shipped programs have no runtime dependency on Fennel itself.

Fennel tends to appear where Lua is already attractive: games, editors, small tools, embeddable application scripting, and environments where LuaJIT or stock Lua is already available. Package users care that the command-line tool is easy to install while still producing plain Lua output.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers, Fennel is interesting because it is both a language implementation and a small CLI artifact. It has minimal runtime expectations compared with larger language stacks, but it still needs careful Lua-version compatibility and documentation around source builds, standalone scripts, and generated Lua.

Its presence across Homebrew and several Linux distributions makes it a representative example of a niche programming language that crossed from source-only usage into normal OS package workflows without becoming a heavyweight runtime.

Timeline

• 2016: Public GitHub repository created.
• 2018: Fennel 0.1.0 appears in the project release history.
• 2021: Fennel 1.0.0 released.
• 2024: Fennel 1.5.0 adds compiler, REPL, and language improvements.
• 2025: Fennel 1.6.0 continues compiler API and Lua compatibility work.

Related projects

• Fennel is directly related to Lua and LuaJIT because it compiles to Lua and inherits Lua's runtime ecosystem. It is also related to editor and language-server tooling such as fennel-ls, which exists to make Fennel development more comfortable in LSP-aware editors.

Sources

• https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel
• https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel/blob/main/README.md
• https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel/blob/main/changelog.md
• https://api.github.com/repos/bakpakin/Fennel
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/fennel