Develop and Distribute with Gab

Gab is a small, dynamic language designed for building highly parallel, interactive systems. With gab, you’ll build composable, resilient programs almost by accident.

Simple

Gab’s syntax is minimal - learn the whole language in an afternoon.

welcome = ['Hello', ' ', 'world!']
welcome.join.println
# => Hello world!

Parallel

Gab’s runtime is built on units of execution fibers. Fibers are lightweight and far cheaper than OS threads - make as many as you like. Gab will schedule them across all your cores, and run them in parallel.

print_chan = Channels.make

Ranges.make(0, 10000).each i => do
  Fibers.make () => do
    print_chan <! 'Hello from fiber $!'.sprintf(i)
  end
end

print_chan.each (msg) => msg.println

Immutable

Every value in Gab is immutable. This makes thinking in parallel easier than ever.

bob   = { name: 'bob',   age: 44 }
alice = bob.put(name: 'alice')

bob    # => { name: 'bob',   age: 44 }
alice  # => { name: 'alice', age: 44 }

Embeddable

Gab is designed to live inside larger applications. A stable C API (gab.h) and a static library (libcgab.a) are provided with every release. Call into Gab from C, or write native modules.

If you’re looking for a scripting layer in your application, Gab is a fantastic option.

Ship anywhere

Build a standalone executable for any supported platform — from any other:

gab build -t aarch64-macos-none -m my,deps my_project
# => my_project  (runs on Apple Silicon, no Gab installation required)

gab build -t x86_64-linux-gnu -m my,deps my_project
# => my_project  (runs on Linux x86_64, no Gab installation required)

The output is a single file containing your code, your dependencies, and the entire Gab runtime. Send it to a server, bundle it in a container, hand it to a colleague or user — it just works.