# Flow compiler plugin
**URL:** https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/flow-compiler-plugin/818
**Category:** Community
**Created:** [October 29, 2018, 12:38pm UTC](https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/flow-compiler-plugin/818 "2018-10-29T12:38:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Meai1](https://forums.foundationdb.org/u/Meai1)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2018, 12:38pm UTC](https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/flow-compiler-plugin/818/1 "2018-10-29T12:38:57Z")
If this is indeed such a great c++ language extension, shouldn’t there be an effort to make this into a standalone installable software product?
What about a VSCode plugin so one could actually use it and get intellisense, how else do people work with this thing?
And the docs say that it’s a compiler plugin but to which compiler exactly? Or do you mean that it simply generates c++ during the foundationdb make step. If that is the case then there should still be some kind of explanation on how to do that in a standalone project in my opinion. Otherwise nobody will understand how this thing works. Like a ‘hello world’ in flowc++, seeing as it is a completely new language.
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### Author:  [@ajbeamon](https://forums.foundationdb.org/u/ajbeamon)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/flow-compiler-plugin/818/2 "2018-10-29T16:29:48Z")
The Flow compiler is a transpiler that converts source written in the Flow language into source written in C++. We do this transpilation early in our build process for FoundationDB. I’m not sure in which documentation we describe it as a compiler plugin, but if you have a link where I can see the context, I can attempt to explain what it meant.
I agree that it would be helpful to provide more details about using Flow, and hopefully in time more content will become available in that vein. We did recently add [some basic documentation](https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/flow/README.md) about the Flow language, though it doesn’t describe how to setup a standalone flow project.