8bitworkshop

Use Online

Latest release:

• https://8bitworkshop.com/latest/ or
• https://sehugg.github.io/8bitworkshop/

Install Locally

To clone just the main branch:

git clone -b master --single-branch git@github.com:sehugg/8bitworkshop.git

To build the 8bitworkshop IDE:

git submodule init
git submodule update
npm i
npm run build
npm run esbuild

To use GitHub integration locally, download the Firebase config file, e.g. https://8bitworkshop.com/v[version]/config.js

Start Local Web Server

Start a web server on http://localhost:8000/ while TypeScript compiles in the background:

make tsweb

Run Tests

# To avoid "API rate limited exceeded" errors, set `TEST8BIT_GITHUB_TOKEN`,
# see: htps://github.com > Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens
export TEST8BIT_GITHUB_TOKEN="<github_personal_access_token>"

npm test

License

Copyright © 2016-2026 Steven E. Hugg.

This project, unless specifically noted, is multi-licensed. You may choose to adhere to the terms of either the GPL-3.0 License for the entire project or respect the individual licenses of its dependencies and included code samples, as applicable.

This project includes various dependencies, modules, and components that retain their original licenses. For detailed licensing information for each dependency, please refer to the respective files and documentation.

All included code samples located in the presets/ directory are licensed under CC0 unless a different license is explicitly stated within the specific code sample.

Contributing

Thank you for your contribution!

The 8bitworkshop IDE is intended for a diverse audience using a wide range of devices. It likes:

• Running locally
• Vanilla TypeScript against Web APIs
• Stable/mature dependencies
• Running decently on 10-year old Chromebooks
• Working (or degrading gracefully) on 5-year old browsers
• Not changing anything described in the 8bitworkshop books too much

The code samples in presets/ are intended to be studied by humans. LLM usage for generating code samples is discouraged, as they tend to hide subtle errors in code and in comments, and it diminishes the human achievment and human-to-human communication aspects of the project.

Adapting third party sample code with permissive licenses and giving credit to the original author(s) is encouraged.

Dependencies

Emulators

• https://javatari.org/
• https://jsnes.org/
• https://www.mamedev.org/
• https://github.com/floooh/chips
• https://github.com/DrGoldfire/Z80.js
• http://www.twitchasylum.com/jsvecx/
• https://github.com/curiousdannii/ifvms.js/
• https://6502ts.github.io/typedoc/stellerator-embedded/
• https://github.com/yhzmr442/jspce

Compilers

• https://cc65.github.io/
• http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/
• http://perso.b2b2c.ca/~sarrazip/dev/cmoc.html
• https://github.com/batari-Basic/batari-Basic
• https://www.veripool.org/wiki/verilator
• http://mcpp.sourceforge.net/
• http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6.html
• https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic
• https://github.com/wiz-lang/wiz
• https://github.com/sylefeb/Silice
• https://github.com/steux/cc7800
• https://bellard.org/tcc/

Assemblers/Linkers

• https://dasm-assembler.github.io/
• http://atjs.mbnet.fi/mc6809/Assembler/xasm-990104.tar.gz
• http://48k.ca/zmac.html
• https://github.com/apple2accumulator/merlin32
• https://github.com/camsaul/nesasm

Dev Kits / Libraries

• https://shiru.untergrund.net/code.shtml
• http://www.colecovision.eu/ColecoVision/development/libcv.shtml
• https://github.com/toyoshim/tss
• https://github.com/lronaldo/cpctelera

Firmware

• http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html
• https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/cbios/
• https://www.pledgebank.com/opense

Related Projects

• https://github.com/sehugg/8bitworkshop-compilers
• https://github.com/sehugg/8bit-tools
• https://github.com/sehugg/awesome-8bitgamedev
• https://github.com/sehugg?tab=repositories

Tool Server (experimental)

This is an experimental feature that relies on a Docker container to provide compiler tools like llvm-mos. Right now, you have to run locally and build your own docker container.

docker build -t 8bitws-server-debian scripts/docker
docker run -p 3009:3009 8bitws-server-debian
echo '{"REMOTE_URL":"http://localhost:3009/build"}' > remote.json

Then add "&tool=llvm-mos" to your URL, like this. You can also rename your C files to have the suffix "-llvm.c". Right now only the platforms c64, atari8, nes (NROM), and pce are supported. Not very many of the current examples work with the new toolchain.