Installing Ballerina

The sections below include information about installing Ballerina.

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Installing Ballerina via Installers

Follow the instructions below to install the latest Ballerina version using the installer. The installer will automatically uninstall the old Ballerina version if you have one already installed.

Info: Ballerina installers support operating systems such as Windows, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, macOS, and Cent OS. If you are using an unsupported operating system, install via the Ballerina language ZIP file.

Installing on macOS

Download the package file and double-click on it to launch the installer. The installer guides you through the installation process and installs the Ballerina distribution in the /Library/Ballerina directory.

Info: Alternatively, you can execute the command below to install Ballerina in macOS using Homebrew. Homebrew installs the Ballerina distribution in the /usr/local/Cellar/ballerina/<BALLERINA-VERSION>/libexec directory.

brew install ballerina

The package automatically sets your PATH environment variable for you. You may need to restart any open Terminal sessions for the change to take effect.

Installing on Windows

Download the MSI file and double-click on it to launch the installer. The installer guides you through the installation process and installs the Ballerina distribution in the C:\Program Files\Ballerina directory.

The installer should put the C:\Program Files\Ballerina\<BALLERINA-DIRECTORY>\bin directory in your PATH environment variable. You may have to restart any open command prompts for the change to take effect.

Installing on Linux

Download the DEB file or RPM file and double-click on it to launch the installer. The installer guides you through the installation process and installs the Ballerina distribution in the /usr/lib64/ballerinadirectory.

Info: Alternatively, you can use either of the commands below to install Ballerina using the downloaded DEB or RPM file. Replace the ballerina-linux-installer-x64-<BALLERINA-VERSION>.deb or ballerina-linux-installer-x64<BALLERINA-VERSION>.rpm with the actual file path.

For example, for the DEB file:

dpkg -i ballerina-linux-installer-x64-1.2.4.deb

For example, for the RPM file:

rpm -i ballerina-linux-installer-x64-1.2.4.rpm

Installing via the Ballerina Language ZIP File

Note: Before you install Ballerina using the ZIP file, ensure that you have a supported Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed. It is recommended to use the AdoptOpenJRE version 1.8 or above.

  1. Download the Ballerina language ZIP file (md5, SHA-1, asc) and unzip it to a preferred location using an archiver tool of your choice. This creates a directory named ballerina- in your system.

  2. Follow either of the steps below depending on your operating system to configure your system environment to run Ballerina:

  • For Linux or macOS: set the PATH environment variable to point to the bin directory of the unzipped Ballerina distribution.
  • For Windows: add a new environment variable specifying the following values:
    • Variable name: PATH
    • Variable value: The location of the bin directory of the unzipped Ballerina distribution. For example, C:\Program Files\Ballerina\ballerina-<VERSION>\bin

Updating Ballerina

If you already have a jBallerina version above 1.1.0 installed, you can use the update tool to update to the latest jBallerina version by executing either of the commands below.

Command Description
ballerina dist update Update to the latest patch version of the active distribution
ballerina dist pull jballerina-<JBALLERINA-VERSION> Fetch a specific distribution and set it as the active version

For more information, see Keeping Ballerina Up to Date.

Building from Source

Alternatively, follow the instructions below to build Ballerina from the source.

Setting Up the Prerequisites

You need to download and install the below to build the Ballerina modules.

  1. Java SE Development Kit (JDK) version 8 (from one of the following locations)
    • Oracle
    • OpenJDK

      Note: Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the path name of the directory into which you installed JDK.

  2. Node.js (version 8.9.x)
  3. npm (version 5.6.0 or later)

Obtaining the Source Code

Follow the steps below to obtain the Ballerina source code.

  1. Execute the command below to clone the ‘ballerina-lang’ source repository.

     git clone --recursive https://github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-lang.git

    Tip: If you have already forked the repository to your GitHub account, then execute the below command replacing <YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME> with your Git username.

     git clone --recursive https://github.com/<YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME>/ballerina-lang.git

  2. Execute the command below to update the Git submodules.

     git submodule update --init

Building the Source

Follow the steps below to build the project of the obtained source.

  1. Navigate to the root directory of the Ballerina repo (i.e., <BALLERINA_PROJECT_ROOT>) and execute one of the Gradle commands below to build the project using Gradle.

    • On Unix/macOS: ./gradlew build
    • Windows: gradlew build

  2. Extract the built Ballerina distributions created in the locations below:

    • Runtime only: <BALLERINA_PROJECT_ROOT>/distribution/zip/jballerina/build/distributions/jballerina-<version>-SNAPSHOT.zip
    • Runtime and tools (e.g., Ballerina Language Server): <BALLERINA_PROJECT_ROOT>/distribution/zip/jballerina-tools/build/distributions/jballerina-tools-<version>-SNAPSHOT.zip

Note: If you face an IOException error stating “Too many open files”, this is due to the default number of possible open files being set to a lower number on your operating system than required for Ballerina to be compiled. You may have to increase the number of open files/file descriptors (FD) on your operating system to 1000000 (or higher).

Uninstalling Ballerina

Usually, the installation location is /Library/Ballerina/distributions in macOS, /usr/lib64/Ballerina/distributions in Linux, and C:\Program Files\Ballerina\distributions in Windows. You can either remove a particular jBallerina version or all the jBallerina versions installed in these locations.

To remove:

  • a specific jBallerina version (via the update tool): execute ballerina dist remove
  • all the installed jBallerina versions: delete the /../Ballerina directory in the respective installation location

What’s Next?

Once you have successfully installed Ballerina, click the links below to set up your IDE.

Tip: To get help when you work with Ballerina, see Community.