The Kawa Scheme language

Kawa is a general-purpose programming language that runs on the Java platform. It aims to combine:

• the benefits of dynamic scripting languages (non-verbose code with less boiler-plate, fast and easy start-up, a REPL, no required compilation step); with
• the benefits of traditional compiled languages (fast execution, static error detection, modularity, zero-overhead Java platform integration).

It is an extension of the long-established Scheme language, which is in the Lisp family of programming languages. Kawa has many useful features.

Kawa is also a useful framework for implementing other programming languages on the Java platform. It has many useful utility classes.

This manual describes version 3.1.1, updated 27 April 2021. See the summary of recent changes.

The Kawa home page (which is currently just an on-line version of this document) is http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/.

The Kawa tutorial is useful to get stated. While it is woefully incomplete, it does link to some other more in-depth (but not Kawa-specific) Scheme tutorials.

For copyright information on the software and documentation, see License.

Various people and orgnizations have contributed to Kawa.

This package has nothing to do with the defunct Kawa commercial Java IDE.