Command line reference

Use this page as the reference for the current development version of Aner. It covers the installed manager, program execution, checks, reports, credentials, maps and parallel jobs. Check Downloads for package availability and Install Aner for setup. An installed package may contain an earlier command set.

A managed installation puts a manager at the aner command. It handles installation commands and forwards runtime commands to the selected native executable. A manually extracted runtime supports the runtime commands below; it does not acquire the manager's installation commands automatically.

Examples use placeholders such as FILE.aner, VERSION, DIR and NAME. Replace them with your own values. Quote paths containing spaces. Flags and their values are separate arguments, such as --device cpu.

Find a command

Help and binary information

Use information flags on their own. --version, --binary, credits and data notices are runtime commands, so a managed installation needs a selected runtime to answer them. aner doctor reports the manager's own version and installation state. Manager help is intentionally shorter than this complete reference. -h and aner run --help are not supported help forms.

See binary identity and CPU optimization for interpreting compiled targets and hardware verification.

Run and check programs

aner check study.aner
aner check study.aner --strict-declarations
aner run study.aner
aner study.aner

check parses and checks syntax and types without executing the program. Success prints OK. run performs those checks before execution. The short form runs the same program. A file can contain script statements or a supported main() -> Unit entry point. Relative paths resolve from the terminal's working directory. Source files must be regular files and fit the 2 MiB source limit.

Place runtime options after the source path. check accepts only --strict-declarations. It rejects execution, reporting and chart options. The runtime does not pass arbitrary trailing arguments to an Aner program; unrecognized arguments are errors. aner build reports that native compilation is not implemented.

Execution options

preserve keeps requested precision and permits CPU fallback. adapt may lower precision. fast requests Float32. An explicitly unavailable accelerator fails; auto selects an available backend according to the request and precision policy. The rocm and cluster Tensor backends are unavailable. Parallel CPU workers and cluster jobs use the separate commands below.

aner run study.aner --max-steps 5000000
aner run study.aner --device cpu --precision Float32
aner run study.aner --device auto --precision Float64 --precision-policy preserve

Each runtime option can be supplied once. See neural execution and Tensor devices and performance for backend, dtype and operation support.

Reports and chart files

Choose a new output directory for each report or chart run. Existing directories are rejected. Use either --dev or --debug-viz; neither can be combined with --prod. Reporting and chart output directories have separate roles. Development observations may be written after a runtime failure, while chart publication requires a successful run.

aner run study.aner --dev study-report
aner run study.aner --dev study-values --dev-values
aner run study.aner --debug-viz training-report
aner run study.aner --prod --display-dir study-charts

See development and production, visual training reports and plotting for the report contents and capture limits.

Manage an installation

These commands require the managed installation. They do not install individual language modules.

update accepts --check, --channel stable|dev and --version VERSION. install accepts one exact version and optional --channel stable|dev; it rejects --check. When supplied together, channel and version must agree. Do not repeat --channel or --version. default, rollback, versions and doctor accept only the arguments shown.

A failed installation keeps the existing selection. Runtime updates do not replace the manager itself. Refreshing the manager requires a compatible manager/bootstrap package. Restart notebook sessions after changing the selected executable.

Manager options

Put manager options before a runtime command or information flag. For example:

aner --home "my-aner-home" versions
aner --home "my-aner-home" run study.aner

Manager options can also follow a recognized manager command. Parsing stops at a runtime command such as run, check or --version, so put manager options before those commands. Options use separate values; --home=DIR is not a supported form. A temporary --home does not change the runtime's environment or persist a different home. Use ANER_HOME as well when maps or another runtime feature must use that home.

The normal installation uses the canonical HTTPS catalog and its built in verification key. Private catalog and local fixture options are for explicitly configured installations.

Installation reporting

Use at most one metrics option. Reporting concerns verified downloads and completed installation or selection operations. Running a program sends no activity heartbeat. Environment settings can opt out before the installer runs; see the environment table below and Downloads.

Uninstall Aner

aner uninstall

The current development manager displays the selected runtime version, runtime and manager binaries, installed versions and managed paths. Type Yes to confirm. Matching ignores letter case and surrounding whitespace. Any other response, an empty response or end of input cancels without changing files or sending metrics. There is no --yes shortcut.

Confirmation removes the managed versions, manager and owned command launcher, selection state, and local reporting identity and pending reports. Projects, maps, saved credentials, the VS Code extension and unrelated files in a custom home remain. A launcher selecting another installation is preserved. Windows finishes cleanup after the manager and launcher exit and prints a result log location. See uninstall scope and platform behavior.

Credentials

aner secrets --help
aner secrets set NAME [--store system|file] [--stdin]
aner secrets status NAME [--store system|file]
aner secrets delete NAME [--store system|file]

set reads a value using hidden terminal input. --stdin explicitly permits redirected input for set only. Credential values are never command arguments. status prints configured or missing, both with status 0. delete removes the named stored credential.

The default store is system, using macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager. Linux does not provide this system backend, so select --store file explicitly when saving a value there. The file store is supported on POSIX systems and rejected on Windows. It uses a private directory and files with owner permissions and stores values without encryption at rest.

aner secrets set research-api --store file
aner secrets status research-api --store file
aner secrets delete research-api --store file

Put options after NAME and supply each once. Names contain 1 through 64 ASCII characters, begin with a letter or digit, and otherwise permit letters, digits, underscores, dots and hyphens. Values contain 1 through 8192 visible ASCII bytes without whitespace. The file store defaults to the operating system account's ~/.config/aner/secrets, independently of a temporary HOME setting; ANER_SECRETS_DIR overrides it with an absolute private directory.

See credentials for language references, injected environments and explicit dotenv files. A bare aner secrets command is an error; request help with --help.

Offline map packs

All map commands work with local files. They do not download boundaries. Installing an already valid pack succeeds without replacing it. An altered or incomplete existing pack needs explicit removal before reinstalling. Removing a recognized pack that is absent succeeds; an unknown pack identifier is an error.

Storage is chosen from ANER_MAPS_DIR, then ANER_HOME/maps, then the platform's normal Aner data directory. See offline map packs and state and province maps for pack identifiers and data preparation.

Parallel CPU jobs

aner parallel
aner parallel --help
aner parallel inventory [--json]
aner parallel run [OPTIONS]
aner parallel regression [OPTIONS]
aner parallel status --job DIR [--watch] [--json]
aner parallel cancel --job DIR

inventory always prints JSON describing the native CPU allocation and available execution resources. run performs the deterministic Monte Carlo pi workload. regression performs the fixed analytic logistic training fixture using CPU Float64 and SGD. These commands have fixed workloads. Run an Aner source program to execute your own analysis or train your own model.

Execution options cannot repeat. The total budget is at most 1000000 chunks, and regression adds work for each global step. Local regression requires the default 65536 chunk size. The parser supplies the defaults above even where the short help displays samples, steps or rate as required arguments. Configured SSH worker transport is unavailable on Windows; local configured workers remain available.

aner parallel inventory --json
aner parallel run --samples 1000000 --workers 2 --output pi-job
aner parallel regression --samples 4096 --steps 16 --rate 0.25 --output regression-job
aner parallel status --job pi-job
aner parallel status --job pi-job --watch
aner parallel cancel --job pi-job

status prints job JSON; its optional --json flag does not change the output format. --watch polls for changes and stops when the job finishes, the coordinator goes offline or you press Ctrl+C. cancel requests cancellation at safe task boundaries. A completed job returns its final status. An offline job cannot be resumed.

See native parallel computing, CPU parallelism and simulation repetitions for workload contracts and configured worker execution.

Neural benchmark

aner parallel neural [--device cpu|cuda|mps] [--dtype Float64|Float32]
  [--cluster CONFIG] [--rows N] [--epochs E] [--batch B] [--rate R]
  [--seed S] [--optimizer sgd|adam] [--output NEW_DIR] [--quiet]

This command runs the built in synthetic classifier benchmark with a Dense 64 → 128 → 64 → 4 model. Running aner parallel neural without options starts that benchmark. Use aner parallel neural --help to request help.

Options cannot repeat. This command does not accept a source file, user model file, dataset file, --workers or --background. Job monitoring and cancellation use aner parallel status and aner parallel cancel with its output directory. Accelerator replicas exchange gradients with a canonical CPU optimizer; selecting a GPU does not move every training operation to it.

See distributed neural training for replica placement, precision and result interpretation. For a custom model, use the neural APIs from an Aner program.

Notebook and worker transports

aner session --stdio [--dev-protocol] [--display-protocol] [--strict-declarations]

This is the persistent integration transport used by notebook clients, not an interactive terminal shell. --stdio must come first. The following flags are optional, unique and can appear in any order:

The default transport, development transport and display transport use their respective framing greetings. Requests carry byte lengths; they are not ordinary lines of Aner code typed at a prompt. The source payload limit is 1 MiB, inspection output is bounded to 512 KiB and display output to 4 MiB. A session result distinguishes success, static error and runtime error; those result codes are separate from process exit statuses. session --help is not a supported form.

These additional endpoints are started by configured worker integrations:

Use notebook clients and configured coordinators to operate these transports. See interactive notebooks, native parallel computing and simulation repetitions.

Environment settings

An environment opt out takes precedence over aner metrics --enable. It does not clear an existing reporting queue; use aner metrics --disable to save the opt out and clear that queue. Platform paths and default storage locations are listed in Install Aner.

Exit status and diagnostics

Program diagnostics go to standard error and include a source path, line, column and diagnostic code. The checker prints OK only on success. Session and worker commands use their integration protocols rather than the ordinary program output contract. Use the exit status with the command's documented output when automating work.