The Ballerina Tool is your one-stop-shop for all the things you do in Ballerina.

Use the Ballerina tool

The Ballerina Tool is a command-line tool for managing Ballerina source code. It helps you to manage Ballerina packages and modules, test, build, and run programs, etc.

It also enables you to easily install, update, and switch among Ballerina distributions.

In the CLI, execute the bal help command to view all the actions you can perform with the Ballerina Tool as shown below.

$ bal help
NAME
       The build system and package manager of Ballerina

SYNOPSIS
       bal <command> [args]
       bal [OPTIONS]


OPTIONS
       -v, --version
           Print version information.

       -h, --help
           Print the usage details of a command.


COMMANDS
        The available subcommands are:

   Core Commands:
        build           Compile the current package
        run             Compile and run the current package
        test            Run package tests
        doc             Generate current package's documentation
        pack            Create distribution format of the current package

   Package Commands:
        new             Create a new Ballerina package
        init            Create a new Ballerina package in an existing directory
        add             Add a new Ballerina module to the current package
        pull            Pull a package from Ballerina Central
        push            Publish a package to Ballerina Central
        search          Search Ballerina Central for packages
        semver          Show SemVer compatibility and local package changes against
                        published packages in Ballerina Central
        graph           Print the dependency graph in the console

   Other Commands:
        clean           Clean the artifacts generated during the build
        format          Format Ballerina source files
        grpc            Generate the Ballerina sources for a given Protocol
                        Buffer definition
        graphql         Generate the Ballerina client sources for a given GraphQL config
                        file and generate the GraphQL schema for a given Ballerina
                        GraphQL service.
        openapi         Generate the Ballerina sources for a given OpenAPI
                        definition and vice versa
        asyncapi        Generate the Ballerina sources for a given AsyncAPI definition
        bindgen         Generate the Ballerina bindings for Java APIs
        shell           Run Ballerina interactive REPL
        version         Print the Ballerina version

   Update Commands:
        dist            Manage Ballerina distributions
        update          Update the Ballerina tool

You can use it in the following format.

$ bal <COMMAND> <ARGUMENTS>

Tip: You can view details of the commands by executing the bal help <COMMAND>. For example, the following is the output of the bal help pull command.

$ bal help pull
NAME
       ballerina-pull - Fetch packages from Ballerina Central

SYNOPSIS
       bal pull <org-name>/<package-name>[:<version>]


DESCRIPTION
       Download the specified package from Ballerina Central along with its
       dependencies and cache it in the '.ballerina' directory in the user home.

       Ballerina Central is a package repository hosted at
       https://central.ballerina.io/. A package repository organizes packages
       into a three-level hierarchy: organization, package name, and version.
       Organizations are unique within a repository and can be mapped to an
       individual user or organization registered with the repository.


EXAMPLES
       Pull the latest version of the 'gmail' connector in the 'wso2' organization
       from Ballerina Central.
           $ bal pull wso2/gmail

       Pull the '1.1.0' version of the 'gmail' connector in the 'wso2' organization
       from Ballerina Central.
           $ bal pull wso2/gmail:1.1.0

Core commands

These everyday commands are your best friends! They address the very basics of programming in Ballerina such as compiling, running, testing programs, and generating their documentation.

Package commands

Ballerina packages are the way to organize real-world Ballerina development tasks. The last 3 commands given below allow you to work with the Ballerina Central and also to share Ballerina packages with others in a safe, secure, and dependable way.

Other commands

These powerful supporting tools extend Ballerina to various ecosystem technologies that are inherently cloud-native. This functionality will grow over time and will even be developer extensible in the future.

Update commands