Tooling Overview

The Nic compiler (nicc) provides a complete development toolchain for building, running, and debugging Nic programs.

Quick Reference

Command	Description
nicc build	Build a project from nic.toml
nicc run	Build and run (JIT by default)
nicc new <name>	Create a new project
nicc init	Initialize project in current directory
nicc lsp	Start Language Server Protocol server
nicc bindgen	Generate Nic bindings from C headers
nicc <file.nic>	Compile single file (legacy mode)

Getting Started

Create a New Project

nicc new myproject
cd myproject
nicc build

This creates:

myproject/
├── nic.toml      # Project configuration
└── src/
    └── main.nic  # Entry point

Run Your Project

# JIT compilation (fast, default)
nicc run

# Native compilation
nicc run --build

# Pass arguments to your program
nicc run -- arg1 arg2

Single-File Mode

For quick experiments without a project:

# Compile to executable
nicc myfile.nic -c -o myprogram
./myprogram

# Inspect AST/SAST/LLVM
nicc --ast myfile.nic
nicc --sast myfile.nic
nicc --llvm myfile.nic

Installation

The Nic compiler and standard library are installed via:

make install

This installs:

• The nicc executable to your PATH
• Standard library to ~/.nicc/std/
• Prelude to ~/.nicc/prelude.nic

Verify Installation

nicc --version
ls ~/.nicc/std/

In This Section

• CLI Commands - Complete command reference
• Project Configuration - nic.toml format and options
• C Bindings (bindgen) - Generate Nic FFI from C headers
• Debugging - Parser tracing, error formats, inspection flags
• Editor Support (LSP) - IDE integration and features

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
NIC_STD_PATH	Override standard library location (root containing std/)
NICC_LSP_DEBUG	Enable LSP debug logging (1 to enable)

Development Workflow

1. Create project: nicc new myproject
2. Edit code: Use VS Code with Nic extension for syntax highlighting and LSP
3. Build: nicc build (or just nicc run for quick iteration)
4. Debug: Use --ast, --sast, --llvm flags to inspect compilation stages
5. Profile: Use --debug for parser tracing

See Also

• Language Specification
• Standard Library