README.txt

Ballerina is a general purpose, concurrent, and strongly typed programming language with both textual 
and graphical syntaxes. It is designed to make it easier to write programs that integrate with data sources, 
services, and network-connected APIs of all kinds. It is optimized primarily for such programs - while it can 
be use to program anything, it is not recommended to use Ballerina if a significant portion of the program is 
not related to integrating with data sources, services, or network-connected APIs.

Ballerina has been inspired by Java, Go, and other languages, but it has a concurrency model built around a 
sequence diagram metaphor.

Getting started
==================
You can download the Ballerina distribution, try samples, and read the documentation at http://ballerinalang.org.

Building from the source
==================================
If you want to build Ballerina from the source code:

1. Get a clone or download the source from this repository:
    https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina
2. Run the following Maven command from the ballerina directory: 
    mvn clean install
3. Extract the Ballerina distribution created at `ballerina/modules/distribution/target/ballerina-<version>-SNAPSHOT.zip`
to your local directory.

Running samples
==================================
The website http://ballerinalang.org has several samples you can try out right there in the page.
These samples are also available in the `<ballerina_home>/samples` directory in your Ballerina distribution.
Or go to the ballerina-by-example website (https://ballerinalang.org/docs/by-example/) to view the Ballerina examples.