Installation

This page covers installing the crank CLI. Generated projects have their own dependencies, which crank init installs automatically with go get and go mod tidy.

Requirements

Install these first:

• Go 1.21 or newer.
• Git.
• Network access when scaffolding projects, because dependencies are fetched with go get.

Optional tools such as migrate, swag, and air are installed automatically when possible.

Install with the install script

Recommended for most users:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anurag925/crank/main/install.sh | sh

The script detects your operating system and architecture, downloads the matching release, verifies checksums, and installs the crank binary.

Useful environment variables:

Example:

CRANK_VERSION=v0.1.0 CRANK_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/bin" \
  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anurag925/crank/main/install.sh)"

Make sure the install directory is on your PATH:

crank --version

Install with Go

If you already have Go configured:

go install github.com/anurag925/crank/cmd/crank@latest

Then verify:

crank --version

If your shell cannot find crank, add Go’s binary directory to your PATH:

export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

Build from source

Clone the repository and build the binary:

git clone https://github.com/anurag925/crank.git
cd crank
make build
./bin/crank --help

You can also install the local checkout into your Go binary directory:

make install

Verify the installation

Run:

crank --help
crank list
crank tools

You should see the root help, the feature list, and the tool subcommand list.

Installing tool wrappers

crank wraps external tools, but you usually do not need to install them manually.

If automatic installation fails, run the command shown by crank manually and ensure the binary directory is on your PATH.