Nitpick documentation — ARCHIVED, FOR THE C/C++ PROTOTYPE ONLY

⚠️ This documentation is archived and describes a language that no longer exists in this form.

These guides, man pages, examples and specifications document the original C/C++ prototype of Nitpick, archived at nitpick-prototype. They are preserved for the record.

The current Nitpick lives at alternative-intelligence-cp/nitpick — a fresh line that deliberately starts at version 0.0, written in Nitpick and compiled by itself. It is not a continuation of the prototype and shares no history with it.

Many things about the language have changed since this documentation was written, including keywords, operators and semantics described here that no longer hold. Treating any page in this repository as current will mislead you.

The specification set for the current language is meta/specs/ in the successor repository — DECISIONS.md records every design decision with its reasoning, and TCB.md enumerates exactly what the safety claim trusts.

Documentation, man pages and examples for the archived Nitpick prototype (v0.78.3).

Contents

• guide/ — Programming guide: types, Result handling, Design by Contract, functions, control flow, memory, modules, advanced features, standard library
• guide/npkpkg.md — Package manager usage guide
• man/ — Man page sources and build scripts (man npkc, man npkpkg, etc.)
• examples/ — Example programs demonstrating Nitpick features (69 .npk files)
• reference/ — Language reference and compiler architecture documentation
• specs/ — Language specification (nitpick_specs.txt — 7,200-line spec covering the 3-layer safety system)
• packages/ — Package-specific guides (raylib, GML, Tetris, OpenGL)

Installation

See INSTALL.md in the main nitpick repo for all installation methods (install script, .deb, .rpm, build from source).

Getting Started

See GETTING_STARTED.md for setup instructions.

Man Pages

cd man/
make          # Build man pages
sudo make install  # Install to /usr/share/man/

Examples

Each example can be compiled with:

npkc examples/<name>.npk -o <name>
./<name>

Some examples have subdirectories with their own build scripts.

License

AGPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.md

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Nitpick Ecosystem

This repository is part of the Nitpick ecosystem.

• 🌍 Nitpick-Lang Hub — The central hub connecting all Nitpick projects.
• 📖 Official Web Documentation — Guides, references, and language specifications.
• 🛠️ Nitpick Compiler — The core language and toolchain.