Install

Rivet runs on Linux and macOS. See Cross-distro and macOS support for the supported distro families and the macOS coverage.

macOS

Install from the Homebrew tap:

brew install fobiat/rivet/rivet

This is the recommended route on macOS, and not only for convenience: Homebrew does not attach a quarantine flag to what it installs, so the binary runs without a Gatekeeper prompt. Rivet’s release archives are signed but not notarized — notarization requires a paid Apple Developer ID — so a binary you download directly is quarantined, and macOS refuses to run it until you clear the flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./rivet

The release ships one universal binary containing both an Apple Silicon and an Intel slice, so there is nothing to choose between.

The one-liner below also works on macOS if you would rather not use Homebrew. It downloads that same universal binary and clears the quarantine flag for you — but you then update Rivet by re-running it, rather than with brew upgrade.

One-liner

curl -sSf https://rivet.fobiat.workers.dev/install | sh

The installer fetches a prebuilt binary for your platform — static x86_64 or aarch64 on Linux, the universal binary on macOS — from the latest release when one is available, and otherwise builds from source with cargo install. The one-liner always works — it just gets faster once a release has binaries attached.

Read it first

install.sh is short and readable. Read it before piping it into a shell, the same as you should for any installer.

Pinning a version

curl -sSf https://rivet.fobiat.workers.dev/install \
  | RIVET_VERSION=v0.5.0 sh

RIVET_INSTALL_DIR (default ~/.local/bin) controls where the binary is placed. Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

From source

For development, or to run Rivet from a branch instead of a tagged version:

git clone https://github.com/fobiat/Rivet.git
cd Rivet
cargo run -- about
cargo run -- scan

Run the test suite with cargo test.

Verify

rivet about   # supported workflow and safety boundary
rivet scan    # detected distro, package manager, window manager

scan reports the detected distro family, native manager, and window manager, plus explicit native/foreign packages and supported configuration groups. It does not write anything.

Next: Quickstart.