There are two main varieties of Larceny.

Native Larceny is the fastest and most convenient variety of Larceny. It compiles directly to native machine code for Intel x86 or ARMv7 microprocessors running Linux and for x86 machines running Apple's MacOS X or Microsoft Windows.

Petit Larceny compiles to C instead of machine code. It can be made to run on most Unix machines.

Binary distributions of native Larceny are available for just about any Intel x86-compatible microprocessor running a Linux, Apple OS X, or Windows operating system, and for ARMv7 microprocessors running Linux. Although Larceny still uses 32-bit pointers, it will run on 64-bit machines provided the appropriate 32-bit libraries have been installed.

Binary distributions of Petit Larceny are available for x86 machines running Linux. Petit Larceny requires the gcc compiler as well as the appropriate 32-bit libraries.

Unless you intend to modify Larceny yourself, you do not need its source code, which is available at Larceny's GitHub site.

For more details, see doc/HOWTO-INSTALL. If you want to build Larceny or Petit Larceny from source code, see doc/HOWTO-BUILD.

The current versions of Larceny are available for download at Larceny's main web page.

Larceny is distributed in two forms: as a precompiled binary, or as source code that can be used to reconstruct any of the precompiled binary distributions. Unless you intend to modify Larceny yourself, you do not need to download the source code.

Unpack the distribution files with an appropriate command such as one of the following, substituting the version number (such as 0.98) for "X.Y":

tar -xzf larceny-X.Y-bin-native-ia32-linux86.tar.gz
tar -xzf larceny-X.Y-bin-native-ia32-macosx.tar.gz
tar -xzf larceny-X.Y-bin-native-ia32-win32.tar.gz
tar -xzf larceny-X.Y-bin-petit-stdc-linux86.tar.gz
tar -xzf larceny-X.Y-src.tar.gz

That will create a directory with a similar name (but without the .tar.gz suffix) in your current working directory. That is the Larceny root directory, which you may rename to something shorter, such as larceny; the rest of this section will refer to it by that name.

Assuming you have unpacked a binary distribution for Linux or OS X, the larceny directory will contain the following files:

larceny.bin         Run-time system
larceny.heap        Heap image with preloaded libraries and compiler
larceny             Shell script that runs the two files listed above
scheme-script       Shell script that runs Scheme scripts
compile-stale       Scheme script that compiles R7RS/R6RS libraries
startup.sch         Pathnames for the autoload and require features

If you unpacked a binary distribution, then you should be able to run it immediately by making the larceny directory your current working directory and invoking ./larceny. (If that does not work, you may need to install some 32-bit libraries on your machine. See doc/HOWTO-INSTALL.)

Binary distributions for Windows will include a larceny.bat file in addition to the files listed above, so you can run Larceny by invoking larceny. (If that does not work, you may need to tell the DEP feature to let Larceny opt out.)

If you unpacked the source code there will be many other files and directories, but larceny.bin and larceny.heap will not be present.

You may add the larceny directory to your standard path, or you may install Larceny into a directory that is already part of your standard path.

Suppose, for example, that you want to install Larceny in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib/larceny. Copy the larceny and scheme-script files to /usr/local/bin and edit the definition of LARCENY_ROOT at the head of each file to point to the correct directory:

LARCENY_ROOT=/usr/local/lib/larceny

Then move the entire larceny directory to /usr/local/lib/larceny.

You should now be able to run Larceny from any directory by typing "larceny" at a prompt.

If you are installing Petit Larceny, then you will have to compile the R7RS/R6RS runtime and standard libraries before you can run Larceny in R7RS or R6RS modes.

This step is also required if you are building any variety of Larceny from source code. With the prebuilt native varieties of Larceny, however, this step should not be necessary unless you change one of the files in lib/R7RS, lib/R6RS, or lib/SRFI.

Compiling the R7RS/R6RS runtime and standard libraries is accomplished as follows:

    $ ./larceny
    Larceny v0.98 "General Ripper" (...)
    > (require 'r7rsmode)
    > (larceny:compile-r7rs-runtime)
    > (exit)