Scripting and interacting with nush, the Nu shell

A simple way to use Nu is to write programs that run in nush, the Nu shell.

nush command-line options

Running nush interactively is a great way to explore and test Objective-C components.

You can write executable scripts in Nu if you begin them with a "shebang" line that identifies nush as the shell. For example,

#!/usr/bin/env nush
(puts "Everything old is Nu again.")

Building Cocoa Applications

Another way to use Nu is to use it to write Cocoa applications.

Option 1: No compilation needed

If you don't need to compile any Objective-C code into your application then you can build a Cocoa application by simply copying nush into the Contents/MacOS directory of your application bundle and renaming it to your application's name. Upon startup, the resulting application will load and evaluate a file named main.nu from its Contents/Resource directory.
To see examples of this, see the RandomApp, Currency Converter, and NuRocks example applications. Each example contains a Nukefile that lets you use nuke to do all the work. In each example directory, just type "nuke run" and nuke will build and run the example.

Here is a simple main.nu, taken from the RandomApp example:

;; main.nu
;;  Entry point for a Nu program.
;;
;;  Copyright (c) 2007 Tim Burks, Neon Design Technology, Inc.

(load "Nu:nu")     ;; basics
(load "Nu:cocoa")  ;; cocoa definitions
(load "Nu:menu")   ;; menu generation
(load "randomapp") ;; Aaron Hillegass' famous example

;; define the application delegate class
(class ApplicationDelegate is NSObject
     (imethod (void) applicationDidFinishLaunching: (id) sender is
          (build-menu default-application-menu "RandomApp")
          (set $random ((RandomAppWindowController alloc) init))))

;; install the delegate and keep a reference to it since 
;; the application won't retain it.
((NSApplication sharedApplication) setDelegate:
    (set delegate ((ApplicationDelegate alloc) init)))

;; this makes the application window take focus when
;;  we've started it from the terminal
((NSApplication sharedApplication) activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES)

;; run the main Cocoa event loop
(NSApplicationMain 0 nil)

If you have Objective-C code to compile into your application, you could compile it into a framework and load it from Nu, making it unnecessary to ever use anything but nush as the main program of your application.

Option 2: Compile and use the Nu main function

If you want to compile your Objective-C code directly into your application, you can make your application start with Nu by having it use the following main() function:

extern int NuMain(int argc, const char *argv[]);

int main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
    return NuMain(argc, argv);
}

This also will look for a main.nu file in your application's Contents/Resource directory upon startup.
See the Benwanu sample program for an example that compiles Objective-C code and the NuMain() function directly into an application.

Option 3: Load and use the Nu parser at runtime

If you don't want to modify your main() function, you can also use Nu by loading the Nu framework into your application and using the Nu class to get a parser.

id parser = [Nu parser];

You can then use this parser to parse and evaluate Nu expressions, which you can load from a file or provide inline.

id code = [parser parse:@"(+ 2 2)"];
id result = [parser eval:code];

In this case, the result of the evaluation will be an NSNumber with an integer value of 4.

Building Cocoa Frameworks

A third way to use Nu is to use it in a Cocoa framework that you write. There are nuke tasks to help you with this; they require that you compile at least a small amount of C code for your framework, but in practice, interesting frameworks will probably be a combination of Nu and Objective-C.

One important C function that your framework should include is an initialization function. This function will load the equivalent of "main.nu" for your framework. Here's an example:

void NunjaInit()
{
    static initialized = 0;
    if (!initialized) {
        initialized = 1;
        [Nu loadNuFile:@"nunja" fromBundleWithIdentifier:@"nu.programming.nunja" withContext:nil];
    }
}

The function that it calls loads a Nu file (in this case, named "nunja.nu") from a named bundle. That Nu file should load any other needed Nu files from the bundle using the "load" operator.

Note that it is important to correctly specify the framework identifier. You can do this in a Nukefile with the following line:

(set @framework_identifier "nu.programming.nunja")

You also need to specify the name of your framework initialization function. You can also do this in a Nukefile:

(set @framework_initializer "ProspectInit")

@implementation Nunja

+ (void) load
{
    NunjaInit();
}
...

The appropriate build tasks are created when your Nukefile includes the following command:

(framework-tasks)

With an initialization function, you can create frameworks containing classes written in Nu that can be used directly by Objective-C clients. Those clients need not know anything about Nu; to them, they are simply interacting with classes and objects using Objective-C conventions. It is also possible to use Nu in frameworks without including an initialization function, but for these frameworks, a client application must load their Nu code explicitly using the "load" operator. For example,

(load "FigLeaf:server")

loads the "server.nu" file from the "FigLeaf" framework.