Developed primarily by Calvin Rose and David Smith, the Fennel programming language was introduced in 2016.
The primary design goal was to create a language that combined the best aspects of Lua and Lisp, catering to beginning and experienced programmers. An aim for the language was to be approachable, with a minimalistic syntax that reduces cognitive load. Its Lisp-inspired syntax allows for elegant and concise code, while Fennel inherits Lua's speed by compiling directly to Lua, and macros empower developers to mold the language to their needs.
The development of Fennel was influenced by Lua and Clojure. Fennel compiles to Lua, while the clean syntax and powerful macros of Clojure heavily influenced the language. Fennel builds upon Lua's strengths while adding a touch of Lisp magic. Fennel retains the performance of Lua while adding a more pleasant syntax and macros. While it gains much from Clojure, Fennel is more lightweight and compiles to Lua.
Fennel offers full compatibility with Lua. Any Lua function or library can be easily called from Fennel code, and vice versa. This seamless integration allows the programmer to leverage existing Lua codebases without difficulty. When Fennel code is written, the compiled output is just as efficient. as handwritten Lua. Its compile-time macros empower developers to ship compiled code with no runtime dependency on Fennel itself. Macros play an important role here, allowing the language to be extended and domain-specific abstractions to be created.
Fennel is a one-file library and an executable, making it embeddable in various contexts. Fennel will run anywhere that Lua will run.
The Fennel community actively maintains and improves the language in at least three GitHub repositories.
Fennel is ideally suited for game development, web server applications, and microcontroller programming. Its unique blend of simplicity, speed, and Lisp-like syntax makes it a versatile choice for these domains.
The Fennel programming language is the focus of this portion of our computer programming language guide. Online resources such as the official websites or repositories for the Fennel language are appropriate here, along with any implementations of the languages, repositories, IDEs, or other tools or utilities designed to facilitate programming in Fennel. Tutorials, its developer community, forums, reviews, and other online content specific to the language, are also suitable in this category.
Recommended Resources
This is the official website for the Fennel programming language, designed to bring together the simplicity, speed, and reach of Lua with the flexibility of a Lisp syntax and macro system. Installation instructions, a setup guide, tutorial, Lua primer, style guide, macro guide, and Fennel from Clojure guide are set forth, along with the rationale for creating Fennel. The API listing explains how to embed Fennel into a Lua program, and a changelog describes how it has evolved with time.
https://fennel-lang.org/
Maintained by the Fennel community, the Fennel Wiki tracks resources for the Fennel programming language, such as codebases written in Fennel, a cookbook of Fennel programming techniques, editor support, and package managers that include the language. Tools that support Fennel right out of the box are listed, along with tools for using Fennel instead of Lua to configure or script software, and other resources. Ways to distribute Fennel language code are also provided.
https://wiki.fennel-lang.org/
This is the most active GitHub repository for the Fennel programming language, and probably the official one. As of this writing, this repository has been active since a couple of hours ago, so this appears to be the repository where the language is being actively developed and maintained. Available under the MIT license, the source code, releases, style guides, documentation, information about contributing, and a code of conduct are set forth. Issues and pull requests may be made or acted upon.
https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel
GitHub hosts repositories for programming languages and other projects. I believe this is the original GitHub repository for the Fennel programming language, although there are others, and this one hasn't been updated in six years, as of this writing. It links back to the official website for the language. There are seven forks, which are new repositories that share code and visibility settings with the original upstream repository, although they don't seem to be accessible from this repository.
https://github.com/pyzh/fennel-lang.org
Created by Bradyn Glines, this is the GitHub repository for a language server for the Fennel programming language. A language server is a dedicated process that runs in the background, analyzing codebases. It acts as a server, allowing clients (such as text editors, IDEs, or other development tools) to connect and request information or perform specific actions related to the programming language. As of this writing, the last action on this repository was three years ago.
https://github.com/glinesbdev/fennel-lsp
This is the GitHub repository for a tree-sitter grammar for the Fennel programming language. Released under the MIT license, the project aims to provide a syntax grammar for Fennel using the tree-sitter parser, which is a parsing library designed for incremental parsing. It is a tool for analyzing code syntax, enabling efficient and accurate parsing in various programming contexts. Contributors include Tray Dennis and Otto Modinos. Issues and pull requests may be issued or submitted.
https://github.com/travonted/tree-sitter-fennel
Sourcehut is a platform that provides project hosting, issue tracking, continuous integration, version control, and community interaction for various software projects, such as the Fennel programming language. Fennel is a Lisp dialect that compiles to Lua, aiming for simplicity, expressiveness, and minimal overhead compared to coding in Lua directly. The source code, setup guide, tutorial, rationale, references, and a macro guide are provided, along with a style guide and Lua primer.
https://sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel/
Sourcehut is a suite of open-source tools designed for software project maintainers and collaborators. Fennel-ls is a language server for the Fennel programming language, which enhances intelligent editing. Go-to-definition support is offered, along with limited completion suggestions, static analysis, the ability to treat files as macro files, a batch mode for gathering diagnostics, and customizable settings for diagnostics and globals. Instructions for setting it up are included.
https://sr.ht/~xerool/fennel-ls/
