Install ponyc with Homebrew, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• pony-doc
• pony-lint
• pony-lsp
• ponyc

Project history

Pony grew from Sylvan Clebsch's experience building low-latency actor systems in C and researching how a type system could prevent data races without copying every message. Work on the language began at Causality in June 2014; the first Pony program compiled and ran in September 2014, and the compiler and runtime were open-sourced in May 2015.

Adoption history

Pony moved from the Causality company into community stewardship after the company ended. The compiler is distributed through Homebrew, Nix, and Arch-oriented packaging, while the project maintains regular automated releases and a broader toolchain that includes documentation, linting, and language-server executables.

How it is used

Developers use ponyc to compile Pony packages into native executables. The official compiler documentation also covers runtime tuning, instrumented compiler builds, and cross-compilation; the packaged toolchain supplies documentation, linting, and language-server commands alongside the compiler.

Why package nerds care

Pony is notable to language-runtime enthusiasts because its actor model, reference-capability type system, per-actor garbage collection, and ahead-of-time native compilation combine concurrency-safety research with an installable compiler. The package also includes unusually broad developer tooling, including pony-doc, pony-lint, and pony-lsp.

Timeline

• 2014-06: Development of Pony began at Causality.
• 2014-09: The first Pony program compiled and ran.
• 2015-05: The compiler and runtime were open-sourced.
• 2017: Designer Sylvan Clebsch published an official early history of Pony.

Related projects

• The compiler uses LLVM-related technology for ahead-of-time native compilation and provides a C foreign-function interface. The Encore research language was based on the Pony runtime.

Sources

• https://www.ponylang.io/blog/2017/05/an-early-history-of-pony/
• https://www.ponylang.io/contribute/releases/
• https://www.ponylang.io/discover/
• https://www.ponylang.io/use/compiler/
• source_facts.package-manager