We’re excited to announce the release of Animula 0.5.2! This version brings several important updates and fixes that take the project one step closer to production-ready quality.

What is Animula?

Animula is built on two powerful ideas: functional programming and embedded systems. This unique combination brings clarity, elegance, and expressive power to embedded development.

Animula means "a little soul" in Latin. The name reflects the philosophy behind the project—a minimal yet expressive engine that breathes life into tiny machines.

Animula is a highly optimized virtual machine with a strong emphasis on functional programming. It’s designed specifically for compact embedded systems. With as little as 10KB of memory, you can run a high-level language like Scheme—bringing the power of abstraction and composability into resource-constrained environments.

✨ Notable Updates

🧼 Hygienic Macro Support

Animula now features proper hygienic macros, enabling safer and more expressive metaprogramming without unexpected variable capture. Write macros with confidence!

🧠 Integrated tinygc (Tiny Garbage Collector)

Although Animula has its own WIP object-based GC, it is good to support a mature GC to help users for their various purpose. That's why we've added support for tinygc, a lightweight and embedded GC, making memory management easier for embedded or resource-constrained environments.

🐛 Fixed stack-use-after-return

A subtle but serious memory bug has been patched. With the help of sanitizers, we've tracked and fixed a stack-use-after-return issue, improving runtime stability. Check this post to know more.

🛠 strnlen Fix for Zephyr RTOS

Compatibility with Zephyr RTOS has been improved with a fix for strnlen. This ensures better portability and behavior across embedded platforms.

Read the docs

Please find related help via the documents:

https://github.com/hardenedlinux/animula-docs

Buy Alonzo board to play it!

Happy Hacking!