Install ats2-postiats with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• myatscc
• patscc
• patsopt

Project history

The official ATS2/Postiats README says ATS/Postiats, also called ATS2/Postiats, is the current compiler for ATS2 and the successor to ATS1. Its implementation began in March 2011 and took about two and a half years to reach the first ATS2 release at the beginning of September 2013.

The README also states that the ATS2 compiler code base was more than 180,000 lines and nearly all written in ATS1. Compared with ATS1, it identifies ATS2's template system as the most important new feature, and notes that ATS2 is leaner, needing no compiled libatslib.a for ordinary use and removing ATS1's built-in GC support in favor of third-party collectors when needed.

The official ATS language site frames ATS more broadly as a language rooted in Applied Type System, with dependent and linear types, C/C++-level efficiency goals, functional, imperative, concurrent, and modular programming styles, and an ATS/LF subsystem for programmer-centric verification.

Adoption history

ATS2/Postiats adoption is niche but serious: it appears in Homebrew as a compiler package, the official site maintains books, tutorials, examples, libraries, papers, mailing lists, and community links, and the README encourages users to install official SourceForge releases rather than treating the GitHub tree as the primary end-user distribution.

SourceForge release feeds show the 0.4.x line distributed as multiple tarballs, including core, include, contrib, gmp, and int packages. That packaging split matters to language-package maintainers because ATS2 is both a compiler and a small ecosystem of generated C, libraries, headers, and contributed code.

How it is used

Homebrew installs the user-facing compiler commands `patscc`, `patsopt`, and `myatscc`. `patsopt` is the compiler front end/optimizer, while `patscc` is commonly used as the compile-and-link driver for ATS2 programs that generate C and then build native executables.

The official documentation set is book-oriented rather than man-page-oriented. It includes an introduction to programming in ATS, a tutorial on ATS programming features, examples, libraries, and community pages, reflecting a language with a steep type-system learning curve rather than a self-explanatory single binary.

Why package nerds care

ATS2/Postiats is package-nerd significant because it is a self-hosting-adjacent research language implementation: ATS2 is implemented mostly in ATS1, ships as source releases with compiler, include, contrib, and GMP/integer variants, and emits C as part of its practical systems-programming story.

It also represents a different kind of package from most Homebrew CLIs. Installing it gives access to a full experimental language system whose value depends on documentation, examples, generated C integration, and the availability of the prior ATS toolchain lineage.

Timeline

• 2011-03: ATS2/Postiats implementation started, according to the official README.
• 2013-09: First ATS2 release reached after roughly two and a half years of implementation.
• 2019-12: SourceForge feed shows ATS2/Postiats 0.4.0 release artifacts.
• 2020-08: SourceForge feed shows ATS2/Postiats 0.4.1 release artifacts.
• 2020-11: SourceForge feed shows ATS2/Postiats 0.4.2 release notes and component tarballs.
• 2021-06: SourceForge feed shows ATS2/Postiats 0.4.2 tarballs uploaded.

Related projects

• Related official projects and lineages include ATS1/Anairiats, ATS2-contrib, ATS2-include, ATS/LF, atscc2js, atscc2php, and the broader ATS language documentation and examples hosted on the ATS site.

Sources

• Official ATS language Home and Documents pages.
• Official ATS2/Postiats README.
• Official SourceForge project RSS feed.