Installing ZVM

ZVM lives entirely in $HOME/.zvm on all platforms it supports. Inside of the directory, ZVM downloads Zig versions and links whichever version you specify with zvm use to $HOME/.zvm/bin. You should add this folder to your path. After ZVM 0.2.3, ZVM’s installer will now add ZVM to $HOME/.zvm/self. You should also add this directory as the environment variable ZVM_INSTALL. The installer scripts should handle this for you automatically on *nix and Windows systems.

If you don’t want to use ZVM_INSTALL (like you already have ZVM in a place you like), then ZVM will update the exact executable you’ve called upgrade from.

All installation scripts hosted on www.zvm.app are identical to, and are automatically synced with their respective copies on GitHub.

www.zvm.app/install.sh === ./install.sh

Linux, BSD, macOS, *nix

curl https://www.zvm.app/install.sh | bash

Windows

PowerShell

irm https://www.zvm.app/install.ps1 | iex

Command Prompt

powershell -c "irm https://www.zvm.app/install.ps1 | iex"

Go

go install -ldflags "-s -w" github.com/tristanisham/zvm@latest

Manually

Please grab the latest release.

Alternatively, you can build the app by cloning the repository and running

go build .
./zvm

If you want to compile ZVM without zvm upgrade, such as when packaging ZVM for a system package manager, build it with the noAutoUpgrades tag:

go build -tags noAutoUpgrades \
  -ldflags "-s -w -X 'main.BuildUpgradeMessage=Use your package manager to upgrade ZVM.'" .

Putting ZVM on your Path

ZVM requires a few directories to be on your $PATH.

Linux, BSD, macOS, *nix

The installer script handles this for you automatically. If you need to set it up manually, append the following to your shell’s startup file (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.profile):

export ZVM_INSTALL="$HOME/.zvm/self"
export PATH="$HOME/.zvm/bin:$ZVM_INSTALL:$PATH"

Then restart your shell or source the file for the changes to take effect.

Windows

If you don’t know how to update your environment variables permanently on Windows, you can follow this guide. Once you’re in the appropriate menu, add or append to the following environment variables:

Add

• ZVM_INSTALL: %USERPROFILE%\.zvm\self

Append

• PATH: %USERPROFILE%\.zvm\bin
• PATH: %ZVM_INSTALL%

Configure ZVM path

It is possible to overwrite the default behavior of ZVM to adhere to XDG specification on Linux. There’s an environment variable ZVM_PATH. Setting it to $XDG_DATA_HOME/zvm will do the trick.

Community Packages

AUR

ZVM on the Arch AUR is a community-maintained package, and may be out of date.