Over the last couple of weeks I've added bytes and improved struct handling in Menai so it's time to make this available as a stand-alone package.
Stand-alone Menai
Menai started out as a language to embed inside an AI environment, but its origins go back about 12 years when I was first working with blockchains. At that time I also wanted an efficient, pure functional language that I could use for smart contract programming. Since then I've had several other occasions where the same concept would have been useful.
Until the last few days Menai has only been available inside Humbug, but I've now separated it out into a sibling package.
Along with the compiler and VM runtime, I've also separated out all the CLI tools and tests so Menai can be used easily in other projects.
As Menai is implemented in Python, it made sense to publish Menai to PyPI, and also to set up the dev environment so all the binary builds of the VM are packaged correctly too. These all now build and install via GitHub actions.
With Menai now set up as a stand-alone package, I was also able to simplify Humbug's build system to use this instead of doing more complex build steps.