To prepare your computer for Gleam development you’ll need to install Gleam, Erlang, and optionally install any Gleam plugins for your editor.
Installing Gleam
Precompiled for amd64 Linux, Windows, and macOS
The easiest way to install Gleam on Linux, Windows, and Apple macOS is to download a prebuilt version of the compiler from the GitHub release page.
Mac OS X
Using Homebrew
With Homebrew installed run the following:
brew update
brew install gleam
Using MacPorts
With MacPorts installed run the following:
sudo port install gleam
Using the Nix package manager
nix profile install gleam
asdf version manager
asdf is a tool for installing and managing multiple version of programming languages at the same time. Install the asdf-gleam plugin to manage Gleam with asdf.
Arch Linux
Gleam is available through the Arch User Repository
as package gleam. You can use your prefered helper
to install it or clone it for manual build from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gleam-git.
FreeBSD
Gleam is available in ports, and also in binary packages. You may need
to use the latest package repo, amend per instructions in
/etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf. See below for adjusting your PATH to use latest
Erlang/OTP runtime and not just the standard OTP21:
$ pkg install -r FreeBSD lang/gleam lang/erlang-runtime23
$ export PATH=/usr/local/lib/erlang23/bin:$PATH
OpenBSD
For OpenBSD -current, Gleam is available as a binary package. You can install it with:
$ doas pkg_add gleam
Void Linux
Gleam is available as part of the official packages repository. Install it with:
sudo xbps-install gleam
Windows
Using Scoop
With Scoop installed on your computer run the following:
scoop install gleam
Build from source
The compiler is written in the Rust programming language and so if you wish to build Gleam from source you will need to install the Rust compiler.
# Download the Gleam source code git repository
cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam.git --branch $THE_LATEST_VERSION
cd gleam
# Build the Gleam compiler. This will take some time!
make install
# Verify the compiler is installed
# Prints "gleam $VERSION"
gleam --version
Installing Erlang
Gleam compiles to Erlang code, so Erlang needs to be installed to run Gleam code.
Precompiled builds for many popular operating systems can be downloaded from the Erlang solutions website.
Once Erlang has been installed you can check it is working by typing erl
-version in your computer’s terminal. You will see version information like
this if all is well:
erl -version
Erlang (SMP,ASYNC_THREADS) (BEAM) emulator version 12.1.5
Linux
Alpine Linux (Community repository)
apk add erlang
Arch Linux (Community repository)
pacman -S erlang
Fedora
dnf install elixir erlang
Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS
wget https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/erlang-solutions_2.0_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i erlang-solutions_2.0_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install esl-erlang
Mac OS X
Using Homebrew
With Homebrew installed run the following:
brew update
brew install erlang
Using MacPorts
With MacPorts installed run the following:
sudo port install erlang
Windows
Using Chocolatey
With Chocolatey installed on your computer run the following:
choco install erlang
Using Scoop
With Scoop installed on your computer run the following:
scoop install erlang
Using version managers
asdf
The asdf version manager has a plugin for installing Erlang. Installation and usage instructions can be found here:
Installing rebar3
When using Erlang based dependencies (such as their web servers and HTTP clients) the rebar3 Erlang build tool may need to be installed. Install rebar3 by following the official rebar3 installation instructions.
Editor Plugins
Gleam plugins are available for several popular editors. If one exists for your editor of choice consider installing it for syntax highlighting and other niceties.
- Vim - https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam.vim
- Emacs - https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam-mode
- Visual Studio Code - https://github.com/gleam-lang/vscode-gleam
- Sublime Text - https://github.com/digitalcora/sublime-text-gleam
- Atom - https://github.com/itsgreggreg/language-gleam
- Gedit - https://github.com/DannyLettuce/gleam_gedit
What next?
Now you have installed Gleam check out the Language Tour for an overview of the Gleam language.