beef-macos

Build the Beef programming language toolchain on macOS.

Upstream publishes Windows binaries only, and its documentation's build instructions are thin. This repository carries the small set of source patches a modern macOS toolchain needs, plus a script and instructions that turn a fresh upstream checkout into a working BeefBuild in about ten minutes.

git clone <this repo> && cd beef-macos
bash setup-beef-macos.sh

What's in here

Path
BUILDING-macOS.md	Full instructions, the reasoning behind each patch, and troubleshooting
setup-beef-macos.sh	Fetches upstream at a pinned revision, patches, builds, verifies
patches/0001-libcpp-iterator-conformance.patch	Makes Beef's C++ compile with current libc++
patches/0002-corlib-macos-sockets.patch	Fixes four socket bugs on BSD/macOS
patches/0003-macos-dynamic-library.patch	Makes BuildKind = "DynamicLib" produce a real .dylib
tests/socket_ipv6/	Beef project proving the socket fixes (IPv6 listen + connect round-trip)

The two patches

0001 — libc++ iterator conformance. Beef's ArrayBase/SizedArrayBase iterators claim std::random_access_iterator_tag but never implemented operator[], which modern libc++'s std::sort requires. Without this the C++ compiler does not compile on a current Xcode. Not macOS-specific.

0003 — dynamic libraries. BuildKind = "DynamicLib" was routed to the static archiver, producing an ar archive named .dylib that nothing could link against. macOS now links through the -shared path with an @rpath install name. Static libraries work too, once the LLVM tools are linked into the toolchain's dist directory, <Beef>/IDE/dist/llvm/bin/ (the setup script does this).

0002 — macOS sockets. Four bugs in corlib's Socket, all from treating macOS as Linux (or Windows):

• AF_INET6 hardcoded to the Windows value 23 (macOS needs 30, Linux 10) — this also broke IPv6 on Linux;
• sockaddr missing the BSD sa_len/sin6_len length byte, so bind() saw address family 0;
• addrinfo in glibc field order rather than BSD's, which made hostname-based connect() segfault;
• Linux socket-option values (SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, SO_BROADCAST, IPV6_V6ONLY) on macOS.

Everything platform-specific is behind #if BF_PLATFORM_MACOS || BF_PLATFORM_IOS, so Windows and Linux code paths are unchanged. Total delta against upstream: 4 files, +101 / −4 lines — no changes to the compiler itself.

Verified

macOS 27.0 on Apple Silicon, Xcode 26 / Apple clang 21, Homebrew llvm@22 22.1.8, against upstream master at 1cd7cf86. The build completes, the corlib suites report 134 of 134 tests passing, and tests/socket_ipv6 passes every check — including IPv6 connect/accept/send/recv over ::1 via both the explicit-sockaddr and getaddrinfo paths.

Intel Macs should work (the patches are architecture-independent) but are untested.

Scope

This covers the command-line toolchain. Upstream's GUI IDE remains Windows-only and needs substantially more porting work; see the "Not included" section of BUILDING-macOS.md.

The tools land in a directory called IDE/dist — that is the repository's layout, not a sign that an IDE is built. A macOS build produces the CLI tools only.

Editor integration is published separately:

beef-lsp-macos — a working Beef language server (completion, hover, go-to-definition, find references, rename, document symbols, signature help, semantic tokens, formatting, diagnostics) plus a VS Code extension and a ready-to-install .vsix. It builds on the toolchain this repository produces.

License

Beef is Copyright © 2019 BeefyTech LLC and MIT licensed. LICENSE.TXT and LICENSES.TXT are upstream's own files, reproduced here because the patches are derived from that source. The patches are offered under the same terms.