# Nim maintenance script

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Version: | 1.6.8

> "A great chef is an artist that I truly respect" -- Robert Stack.

# Introduction

The koch program is Nim's maintenance script. It is a replacement for make and shell scripting with the advantage that it is much more portable. The word koch means cook in German. `koch` is used mainly to build the Nim compiler, but it can also be used for other tasks. This document describes the supported commands and their options.

# Commands

## boot command

The boot command bootstraps the compiler, and it accepts different options:

`-d:release`
By default a debug version is created, passing this option will force a release build, which is much faster and should be preferred unless you are debugging the compiler.
`-d:nimUseLinenoise`
Use the linenoise library for interactive mode (not needed on Windows).

After compilation is finished you will hopefully end up with the nim compiler in the `bin` directory. You can add Nim's `bin` directory to your `$PATH` or use the install command to place it where it will be found.

## csource command

The csource command builds the C sources for installation. It accepts the same options as you would pass to the boot command.

## temp command

The temp command builds the Nim compiler but with a different final name (`nim_temp`), so it doesn't overwrite your normal compiler. You can use this command to test different options, the same you would issue for the boot command.

## test command

The test command can also be invoked with the alias `tests`. This command will compile and run `testament/tester.nim`, which is the main driver of Nim's test suite. You can pass options to the `test` command, they will be forwarded to the tester. See its source code for available options.

## web command

The web command converts the documentation in the `doc` directory from rst to HTML. It also repeats the same operation but places the result in the `web/upload` which can be used to update the website at https://nim-lang.org.

By default, the documentation will be built in parallel using the number of available CPU cores. If any documentation build sub-commands fail, they will be rerun in serial fashion so that meaningful error output can be gathered for inspection. The `--parallelBuild:n` switch or configuration option can be used to force a specific number of parallel jobs or run everything serially from the start (`n == 1`).

## pdf command

The pdf command builds PDF versions of Nim documentation: Manual, Tutorial and a few other documents. To run it one needs to install Latex/xelatex first.