Installation

The first step is to get the sxml command. You can download a prebuilt archive, or build sxml from its source code. Both give you the same program: one file, sxml (sxml.exe on Windows), with every feature of the library in it and no dependencies.

Installing a release archive

Each release of sxml comes with an archive of the sxml command for each supported platform, named sxml-VERSION-TARGET:

Download the archive for your system from the releases page of the repository, https://github.com/dhamidi/sxml/releases, together with the file SHA256SUMS. Check the archive, unpack it, and put the program in a directory on your PATH. On Linux, for example:

sha256sum --check --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS
tar -xzf sxml-0.2.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
install -m 755 sxml-0.2.0-x86_64-linux/sxml ~/.local/bin/sxml

On macOS, a downloaded program that is not notarized is quarantined; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine sxml lets it run. On Windows, unpack the .zip and add its directory to the Path environment variable. The WebAssembly program runs in a WASI runtime that gives it the directories it may read, for example wasmtime --dir=. sxml.wasm xpath '1 + 1'.

Each archive also holds USAGE.md, the manual of the command.

sxml has no tagged release yet. Until the first one is published, build it from source as the next section describes; it takes a few minutes.

Building from source

To build sxml you need:

• CMake 3.24 or later;
• Ninja;
• a C17 compiler: Clang or GCC on Linux and macOS, or MSVC on Windows.

sxml has no other dependencies: everything it uses is in its repository. Get the source and build the release configuration:

git clone https://github.com/dhamidi/sxml
cd sxml
cmake --preset release
cmake --build --preset release

The command is now build/release/apps/sxml. Put its directory on your PATH:

export PATH="$PWD/build/release/apps:$PATH"

Add that line, with the full path, to your shell's startup file (such as ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) to keep it.

If you use mise, the repository's mise.toml fetches the exact tools it is built with, and one task builds sxml for your machine and installs it into ~/.local/bin (or the prefix you name):

mise install
mise run install
mise run install -- /usr/local

Checking the installation

To check that sxml is installed, ask it for its version:

$ sxml --version
sxml 0.2.0

If you see a version number, you're all set. If your shell says it cannot find sxml, check that the directory with the program in it is on your PATH.

Getting help

sxml help lists the commands, and sxml help COMMAND (or sxml COMMAND --help) explains one of them, with examples:

$ sxml help | head -5
sxml - check, validate, query and transform XML documents

Usage: sxml [--version] COMMAND [ARGUMENT...]

sxml checks XML 1.0 and 1.1 documents, validates them against DTDs

Appendix A, The Command-Line Reference, describes every command and option.

Following along

The book's examples are in the sxml repository, in docs/book/examples/. If you built sxml from source, you already have them. Each project of the book has a directory of its own, like a small repository: the Vane specification is in spec, the diagrams in svg, and so on. The chapters that use no project, such as this one, have a directory of their own too. Each chapter says which directory it uses; change into it, and every command will find its files. For this chapter that is:

cd docs/book/examples/getting-started