Lyric

What changed in v1.9.0 — 2026-08-19

Two tools. lyric pack turns a program into one standalone executable, and lyric fmt gives every Lyric file the one shape there is. The language, the standard library, the bytecode format and the embedding API are untouched; the format stays 3.2, and a .lyrbc built by 1.8.0 packs and runs unchanged.

Added

• lyric pack app.lyr — a program becomes one file.

  lyric pack app.lyr
  ./app arg1 arg2
  

  The result is a copy of a prebuilt stub runtime with the compiled module and a 24-byte footer appended — a byte copy, no linker, no .NET on the target machine. The packed program owns its whole command line (no -- protocol, no wrapper options), runs with every capability like any standalone program, exits with main's return value, and its panics name your lines — same runtime, same bytes, same backtraces as lyric run.

  Two new binaries carry it: lyrpack, which packs a .lyrbc and nothing else, and lyrstub, the runtime half of a packed program. The release archives hold the platform's stub under stubs/<rid>/; a bare stub started directly explains itself instead of failing obscurely, and a truncated pack is reported as damaged rather than executed. The format is specified in docs/Pack.md, the guide's chapter 17 says what to know before shipping. The release pipeline packs an example and RUNS the result on Windows and Linux before an archive exists.

• lyric fmt — the formatter. In place for files and directories, --check for CI (writes nothing, exits nonzero when anything would change), --stdin for editors. No style options.

  What it keeps: every comment (trailing ones trailing), your blank lines capped at one, your literal spellings (0xFF, 1_000_000). What it decides: line breaks against the 100-column limit, trailing commas exactly where the grammar allows them and only in broken layout, a blank line after the module header and between declarations with bodies. A file that does not parse is reported and left byte-for-byte untouched.

  The repository holds itself to it: the standard library, the examples and the templates are formatted, and a test fails when they stop being it.

Changed

• The standard library, the examples and the project templates are reformatted with the new formatter. No signature, no name and no behaviour changed — the test suite verifies the reformatted sources compile to the same programs.

Not in this release

• Packed executables that run on macOS. A Mach-O declares its own extent; appended bytes put the file beyond it, and codesign refuses the result — found by the release pipeline's own gate, recorded in docs/Pack.md. The fix is a real Mach-O segment for the payload, deno's route; until then macOS packs for the OTHER platforms via --stub.
• Cross-platform packing sugar: a pack is for one platform, and a foreign platform packs via --stub with that platform's stub out of its archive. No --target until someone needs it.
• A trimmed stub: 73.5 MB self-contained today; trimming measures 13.0 MB and survives a smoke test, but one smoke is not a gate. Decision material for the next scope check.
• Capability narrowing at pack time: a packed program runs with everything, like any standalone program. Narrowing is a footer field for a future minor.
• textDocument/formatting in the language server: the formatter lives in the library the server already uses; the wiring is a later slice.
• Format-on-save configuration, formatter style flags: deliberately never.

The full changelog →