Compiler version

The Factor VM is written in C++. It can be compiled with GCC or Microsoft's Windows SDK.

SSE2 required on x86

Factor's compiler uses SSE2 instructions for floating point math on x86 CPUs. Intel CPUs have supported SSE2 since 2001, and AMD since 2003, so there is no reason for a modern compiler to generate code for the obsolete x87 floating point unit.

Windows x86

Factor requires Windows XP, Vista, or 7.

To compile Factor from source on Windows, you must install Microsoft's Windows 7 SDK. The SDK ships with Windows headers, libraries and command-line tools, including a C++ compiler. Note that the SDK will work on XP, Vista as well as Windows 7, despite having "7" in its name.

Mac OS X

Factor requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Linux

Factor requires a distribution with Linux kernel 2.6.

Factor will use X11 for the UI. For X11 support, you need development packages for X11, Pango, and OpenGL. On a Debian-derived Linux distribution (like Ubuntu), you can use the following line to grab everything:

sudo apt-get install g++ libc6-dev libpango1.0-dev libx11-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsqlite-dev libssl-dev

Note that if you are using a proprietary OpenGL driver, you should probably leave out the last package in the list.

FreeBSD

Factor requires FreeBSD 7.

OpenBSD

Factor requires OpenBSD 4.5.