Installation

Phel requires PHP 8.3+. Choose the installation method that works best for you:

Composer#

Recommended for most projects. Create a new project:

composer create-project --stability dev phel-lang/cli-skeleton example-app
cd example-app
composer repl

Or add Phel to an existing project:

composer require phel-lang/phel-lang

Commands are available through vendor/bin/phel.

No project setup needed. Download the pre-built PHAR from the latest GitHub release:

curl -L https://phel-lang.org/phar -o phel.phar
php phel.phar --version

Use it exactly like the Composer-installed binary:

php phel.phar repl
php phel.phar run src/main.phel
php phel.phar test --filter foo

For Nix users. Quickly try Phel without installing it globally:

nix shell nixpkgs#phel
phel repl

For a repeatable development environment, create a shell.nix in your project:

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> { } }:

pkgs.mkShell {
  packages = with pkgs; [
    php83
    php83Packages.composer
  ];
}

Then run nix-shell and use Composer as normal.