This is haskeem, a small scheme interpreter. It lives on the web at http://www.korgwal.com/haskeem/ You should be able to build it with cabal configure cabal build Once you have done so, find the haskeem executable and run it. At the "lisp> " prompt, type (assuming you are still in the top-level haskeem directory) (load "stdlib.scm") (load "selftest.scm") The first command loads haskeem's standard library, and the second command runs the self-test. Assuming that all works, you can automate some of this: copy the haskeem executable and the stdlib.scm file to some standard location(s), and then set the environment variable HASKEEM_INIT to the absolute path of the stdlib.scm file. I store both the haskeem executable and the stdlib.scm file in /home/uwe/tools, which is in my PATH, and thus I set HASKEEM_INIT to /home/uwe/tools/stdlib.scm. Then I (and you) can launch haskeem from any directory. If you do not have haskeline installed, don't panic! There is an alternate version of the main module in the file haskeem_readline.hs. That provides either a binding to the gnu readline library, or an alternate REPL with no line-editing capability at all. You'll need to rename this to haskeem.hs, edit it to select which of the two you want, and rebuild. Sorry, no bindings to editline. Enjoy!