Hand-crafted, cross-platform installers for programming languages. Written from scratch, in any language.
PolyInstall is a personal open-source project providing clean, hand-coded installers for a wide range of programming languages across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Every installer in this repository is written from scratch. No borrowed code, no third-party installer frameworks. The language used to build an installer is intentionally decoupled from the language being installed: a C++ installer might be written in C, a Python installer in Rust, and so on. This is a deliberate design philosophy that keeps each installer self-contained and educational.
- Provide reliable, minimal installers for popular programming languages
- Demonstrate that installers can be written in any sufficiently capable language
- Keep all code hand-authored and well-documented for learning purposes
- Support all three major desktop operating systems from a single repository
polyinstall/
├── installers/
│ ├── c/ # Installer for the C language
│ │ ├── windows/
│ │ ├── macos/
│ │ └── linux/
│ ├── cpp/ # Installer for C++
│ ├── python/ # Installer for Python
│ ├── rust/ # Installer for Rust
│ └── .../ # More languages over time
├── shared/ # Shared utilities used across installers
├── docs/ # Documentation and design notes
├── .gitattributes
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
└── README.md
Each language directory contains platform-specific subdirectories. Inside each, you will find:
- The installer source code
- A
BUILD.mdexplaining how to compile/run it - Notes on which language was used to write that installer
| Language | Windows | macOS | Linux | Installer Written In |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Python |
| C++ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Python |
| Python | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | C |
| Rust | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Haskell |
| Go/Golang | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | C |
| PHP | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | C++ |
| C# | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Go |
| Haskell | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | C# |
| R | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Java |
| Objective-C | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | C |
| HTML | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | TypeScript |
| Java | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | Rust |
| JavaScript | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | R |
| TypeScript | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | JavaScript |
| CSS | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| D | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Dart | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Clojure | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| CommonLisp | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Crystal | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| EJS | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| F# | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Apache Groovy | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Julia | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Assembly Script | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Bash Script | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| CoffeeScript | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| CSS3 | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Elm | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Dgraph | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Elixir | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Erlang | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Fortran | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| GDScript | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| Gleam | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| GraphQL | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| LabView | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| LaTeX | 📋 | 📋 | 📋 | TBD |
| More coming soon... |
✅ Complete — 🔧 In Progress — 📋 Planned
This table will be updated as installers are completed.
There is no rule that says a Python installer must be written in Python. PolyInstall deliberately explores cross-language installer authorship. The installer for a given language is chosen based on what makes the most sense technically or what is most interesting to implement.
Every line in this repository is hand-written. No installer frameworks (NSIS, Inno Setup, WiX, etc.) are used. This keeps the project educational and ensures full understanding of what each installer does.
Not every installer can assume a compiler is already present on the target machine — if every installer required a compiled language to run, the whole system would be an unresolvable bootstrapping loop. To break that cycle, shell scripts (Bash for macOS/Linux, Batch/PowerShell for Windows) serve as the guaranteed entry point. They require no compilation and are available on every supported platform out of the box. This means there is always at least one installer that can run on a clean system with no prior tooling, from which everything else can be built up.
Installers aim to rely only on what is available in a standard build environment for the chosen implementation language. Heavy runtime dependencies are avoided wherever possible.
Each installer has its own BUILD.md with specific instructions. The general pattern is:
cd installers/<language>/<platform>
# Follow the instructions in BUILD.mdPrerequisites will vary per installer. Common requirements include a C compiler (GCC, Clang, or MSVC), standard build tools for the implementation language, and platform-specific SDKs where necessary.
This is a personal project and is not currently open to external contributions. However, feedback, suggestions, and issue reports are welcome via the Issues tab.
This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for full details.
Built and maintained as a personal project. All code is original and hand-written.
If you think I deserve a little gift to support me and my creations, feel free to buy me a coffee (not the actual website, but a Revolut payment link)!
Please include your GitHub username in the "Note" section so I can add you to the contributor list on my profile!
