Installation options

The sections below include information about installing Ballerina.

Install Ballerina via installers

Follow the instructions below to install the latest Ballerina version using the installer. The installer will automatically set the latest version as the active distribution after the installation.

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

Install 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.

Tip: Alternatively, you can install Ballerina using Homebrew by executing the brew install bal command. Homebrew installs the Ballerina distribution in the /usr/local/Cellar/ballerina/<BALLERINA-VERSION>/libexec directory.

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.

Install 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 sets 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.

Install 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 following directory.

• For DEB file: /usr/lib/ballerina
• For RPM file: /usr/lib64/ballerina

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

For example, for the DEB file:

dpkg -i ballerina-<VERSION>-swan-lake-linux-x64.deb 

For example, for the RPM file:

rpm -i ballerina-<VERSION>-swan-lake-linux-x64.rpm 

Install 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 11 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-<VERSION> 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

Verify the installation

After installing Ballerina, run the following test to verify if Ballerina has been successfully installed.

Execute the command below from the command shell of the operating system.

bal version

Make certain the command output shows the version that you downloaded as shown below.

Ballerina <VERSION> (Swan Lake)
Language specification 2022R1
update tool 1.3.8

Update Ballerina

If you already have a Ballerina version above 1.1.0 installed, you can use the update tool to update to the latest Ballerina version and set it as the active version by executing either of the commands below.

Info:You might need to first update the update tool to its latest version. If you have an update tool version below 0.8.14, execute the ballerina update command or else execute the bal update command to do this.

For more information, see Update Tool.

Uninstall Ballerina

Usually, the installation location is /Library/Ballerina/ in macOS, /usr/lib/ballerina/ for DEB and /usr/lib64/ballerina/ for RPM in Linux, and C:\Program Files\Ballerina\ in Windows.

To remove:

• a specific Ballerina version (via the update tool): execute bal dist remove <VERSION>
• all non-active distributions (via the update tool): execute bal dist remove -a
• all the installed Ballerina versions: delete the /../Ballerina directory in the respective installation location

Info: Alternatively, you can uninstall Ballerina using the commands below by replacing the actual package name in Linux and from the control panel in Windows.

For example, for the DEB file:

apt-get remove ballerina-<VERSION>-swan-lake

For example, for the RPM file:

rpm -e ballerina-<VERSION>-swan-lake