Installing Gleam

a soft wavey boundary between two sections of the website

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.

macOS

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

Linux

Using Homebrew

With Homebrew installed run the following:

brew update
brew 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.

Alpine Linux

Gleam is available in the Community repository of Alpine Linux as a package gleam. Install it with:

apk add gleam

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.

yay -S gleam

Void Linux

Gleam is available as part of the official packages repository. Install it with:

sudo xbps-install gleam

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

openSUSE

For openSUSE the package is in the process of being accepted into the official repository. For now you will have to add the package’s repository yourself and then install from it:

# zypper addrepo -f https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Pi-Cla/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/ gleam_repo
# zypper refresh
# zypper 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. Some of the above package managers (e.g. Homebrew) will install Erlang alongside Gleam automatically.

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

Using Homebrew

Homebrew will install Erlang alongside Gleam automatically, though it can be manually installed by running the following:

brew update
brew install erlang

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

macOS

Using Homebrew

Homebrew will install Erlang alongside Gleam automatically, though it can be manually installed by running 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.

What next?

Now you have installed Gleam check out the Language Tour for an overview of the Gleam language.