Download

The latest CHICKEN release is 5.4.0, which came out on July 16th, 2024:

Check the README file for instructions on how to build and install CHICKEN.

CHICKEN is also available on several platforms in pre-packaged form (whether as a distribution package or a binary).

For more information about releases, see CHICKEN's release policy.

We also maintain an archive of releases.

Development

Development snapshots

We provide tarballs with development snapshots of the source code.

CHICKEN core development repository

The CHICKEN compiler, interpreter and core libraries are maintained in a git(1) repository.

You can clone the repository by executing

 $ git clone git://code.call-cc.org/chicken-core

Alternatively, if you have problems with firewalls, you can clone it via HTTPS (slower and demands more bandwidth):

 $ git clone https://code.call-cc.org/git/chicken-core.git

To build CHICKEN from git you'll need a recent working version of CHICKEN. In case you don't have one, get the release tarball, build and install it. For more information, see README's "Bootstrapping" section.

If you have patches that you want to submit, please send them to one of the chicken maintainers or (even better) put them at the CHICKEN bug tracking system.

Stability branches

After a major release such as 5.2.0, a maintenance branch may be created to incorporate bugfixes and minor feature improvements, while development on master proceeds apace. Point releases such as 5.2.0.2 are made from this stable branch. For more information, see stability.

Eggs

See the How to obtain the source code of eggs wiki page to find out how to obtain the source code of eggs.

Henrietta-cache status

Henrietta-cache is the program which makes a cache of eggs from distributed repositories at call-cc.org. It scans the repositories hourly. The full set of log files can be found at the following locations: