Install Maxon

Download a prebuilt release for your platform, or build the compiler from source. Either way you'll end up with the maxon toolchain — compiler, language server, and VS Code extension.

Download

Build from source

Maxon currently ships with the C# compiler (maxon-sharp), which builds with the .NET SDK and produces a native-code-generating maxon binary. Building it takes one command.

1. Prerequisites

• › .NET 10 SDK — the compiler targets net10.0.
• › Git
• › Node.js 20+ — only needed to build the VS Code extension

2. Clone and build

Clone the repository and build the compiler with dotnet. The build copies the resulting binary to bin/maxon.

# clone
git clone https://github.com/Stormalong/maxon.git
cd maxon

# build the compiler -> bin/maxon
dotnet build maxon-sharp

On Windows, buildall.bat builds and tests the full toolchain end to end — the C# compiler, the self-hosted compiler, and their spec tests.

3. Compile your first program

Compile and run one of the bundled examples to confirm the build works:

# compile and run an example
bin/maxon build examples/spectral-norm.maxon

# run the full spec-test suite
bin/maxon spec-test

The compiler produces a native executable next to your source file (.exe on Windows). See the CLI reference for every command and flag.

4. Set up your editor

Maxon includes a Language Server and a VS Code extension — syntax highlighting, real-time diagnostics, completion, and hover. Build the extension from the vscode-extension/ directory (Node.js 20+), then install the generated .vsix or load the extension folder directly in VS Code.