Setup Echo

Every Echo library's CI was going to copy the same download, unpack, put-it-on-PATH dance. This action is that dance, once.

It installs a released echoc and epm and leaves the rest of the job to you.

- uses: actions/checkout@v5
- uses: echolang/setup-echo@v1
  with:
    version: v0.3.0
- run: echoc test

Pin version. latest moves. A library CI that does not pin will change compiler overnight and then you get to debug a language change in a pull request about windows.

What you get

Unix archives are two binaries. They land in ~/.echo/bin, which is added to PATH.

The Windows zip is a toolchain: echoc.exe, epm.exe, clang, lld-link, plus lib/ and sysroot/. The action unpacks the whole tree, not just the two executables, because echoc build needs the siblings.

echoc run does not need a linker. echoc build shells out to clang. macOS runners already have one. The Windows archive ships one. On Linux the action installs the distro clang package unless you turn that off.

A library workflow

The action does not check out your repo, does not run epm install, and does not know about X11 or libcurl headers. Those stay in the workflow. A typical matrix looks like this:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [master, main]
  pull_request:

jobs:
  build-test:
    name: ${{ matrix.os }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        os: [macos-15, ubuntu-24.04, windows-2022]
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - uses: echolang/setup-echo@v1
        with:
          version: v0.3.0
      - name: Linux headers the library needs
        if: runner.os == 'Linux'
        run: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libx11-dev
      - run: echoc test

Drop the extra apt-get step when the library has no native headers of its own.

Releasing a library

The install action does not cut releases. That would fire from every CI matrix cell, which is a bad time.

This repo also has a reusable workflow for that. It patch-bumps #[version:] in module.eco, opens a release PR, and when you merge that PR it tags vX.Y.Z and creates the GitHub release.

name: release

on:
  push:
    branches: [master, main]

permissions:
  contents: write
  issues: write
  pull-requests: write

jobs:
  release:
    uses: echolang/setup-echo/.github/workflows/release.yml@v1
    with:
      changelog: true

Keep this out of the test workflow. Test workflows often cancel in-progress runs, and that is a bad moment to be tagging.

changelog: true writes CHANGELOG.md on the release PR. Set it to false if you do not want that file. The GitHub release still happens.

The version line in module.eco needs the marker release-please looks for:

#[version: "0.1.0"] // x-release-please-version

Without it, the tag moves and #[version:] does not.

Under Settings, Actions, General, enable "Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests". The default GITHUB_TOKEN cannot open the release PR without that.

To force a minor or major, put Release-As: 0.2.0 in a commit body.

Inputs

Input	Default	Meaning
version	latest	Release tag (v0.3.0 or 0.3.0) or latest. latest is resolved to a concrete tag so the cache key is stable for that run.
cache	true	Cache the downloaded archive. The Windows zip is hundreds of megabytes, so this is on by default.
token	${{ github.token }}	Used only to resolve latest. The archive itself is a public release URL.
install-clang	true	Install clang on Linux. No-op on macOS and Windows.

Outputs

Output	Meaning
version	The tag that was actually installed (v0.3.0, never latest)
echo-dir	Directory that was put on PATH

- uses: echolang/setup-echo@v1
  id: echo
  with:
    version: latest
- run: echo "running ${{ steps.echo.outputs.version }}"

Platforms

Same list as the Echo installers:

Runner	Archive
macOS arm64	echo-macos-arm64.tar.gz
Linux x86_64	echo-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Windows x86_64	echo-windows-x86_64.zip

Anything else fails with a message telling you to build from source. The action does not compile the compiler.

Releases

Echo itself lives at echolang/echo. The tags you pass as version are Echo's tags, not this repository's.