Installation

Updated 22 Apr 2026

This page describes how to get and install PLEXIL. Familiarity with a Unix-like operating system (e.g. Linux, macOS) is assumed.

Getting PLEXIL

There are two ways to get PLEXIL:

  • Clone the source code from the git repository hosted here on GitHub, and then build the system.

  • Download a compressed archive (tarball) of the sources and prebuilt Java jar files. (NOTE: not available as of June 2, 2026).

In either case, the PLEXIL Executive and other C++ based tools must be compiled from source. The tarball format includes prebuilt Java jar files for the Standard PLEXIL and Plexilscript compilers, the PLEXIL Viewer, and the PLEXIL static checker;

git

PLEXIL source code may be checked out from the repository on GitHub.

The following command will get the latest stable version of the source code (currently the releases/plexil-6 branch):

git clone -b releases/plexil-6 https://github.com/plexil-group/plexil.git plexil

This will create a directory named plexil with all the source files.

Tarball

NOTE: A tarball (compressed source archive file) as described here will hopefully be made available soon. At present, please clone the PLEXIL repository and build the system from sources.

The archive may be expanded by the archive utility on your platform, or at the command line:

tar xzf <tarball>

This will expand to a directory named plexil-6.1.2 with all the source and example files. This is the directory to use as PLEXIL_HOME in the procedures below.

Note that as the released version number changes, the directory name in the archive will change accordingly.

Installing PLEXIL

The PLEXIL Executive and its examples are buildable with either GNU Make or CMake. The C and C++ code complies with the applicable language standards. See Requirements for details.

The top level README has additional information on configuring, building, and running PLEXIL.

Basic installation

These instructions presume a POSIX-compliant shell and GNU make.

  • Unpack or clone the sources. See Tarball or git above.

Note

Plexil may not build correctly if installed in a directory that is a symbolic link, such as /tmp in macOS.

  • Change into the source directory.

  • Set up the environment. (This is not strictly necessary for the

    build, but will be for running programs.)

PLEXIL_HOME="$PWD"
export PLEXIL_HOME
source "$PLEXIL_HOME/scripts/plexil-setup.sh"

  • Build the desired components:

    1. For the PLEXIL Executive (universalExec), TestExec, compilers, checker, and PLEXIL Viewer: make tools

    2. For all the above plus examples: make everything

  • The PLEXIL Executive and related programs will be installed into

    $PLEXIL_HOME/bin ; libraries are installed into $PLEXIL_HOME/lib, and include files to $PLEXIL_HOME/include. There are additional scripts (e.g. plexilexec, plexilc) in $PLEXIL_HOME/scripts .

Advanced installation

The PLEXIL Executive can be configured for a wide variety of applications and environments using either the GNU autotools or CMake. See the top level README file for an outline.