Install Spin

Installing Spin
Verifying the Release Signature
Building Spin From Source
Using Cargo to Install Spin
Installing Templates and Plugins
- Templates
- Plugins
Next Steps

Installing Spin

Spin runs on Linux (amd64 and arm64), macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), and Windows (amd64):

Homebrew

You can manage your Spin installation via Homebrew. Homebrew automatically installs Spin templates and Spin plugins, and on uninstall, will prompt you to delete the directory where the templates and plugins were downloaded:

Install the Fermyon tap, which Homebrew tracks, updates, and installs Spin from:

$ brew tap fermyon/tap

Install Spin:

$ brew install fermyon/tap/spin

Note: brew install spin will not install Fermyon’s Spin framework. Fermyon Spin is accessed from the fermyon tap, as shown above.

Installer script

Another option (other than brew) is to use our installer script. The installer script installs Spin along with a starter set of language templates and plugins:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash

Once you have run the installer script, it is highly recommended to add Spin to a folder, which is on your path, e.g.:

$ sudo mv spin /usr/local/bin/

If you have already installed Spin by building from source, and then install it via the installer, we recommend you remove the older source install by running cargo uninstall spin-cli Otherwise the Cargo path may take precedence over the “install from binary” path, and commands may get the “wrong” version of Spin. Use spin --version to confirm the version on the PATH is the one you intend, or which spin to confirm the path it is found on.

To install a specific version (v1.2.3 is just an example), you can pass arguments to the install script this way:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash -s -- -v v1.2.3

To install the canary version of spin, you should pass the argument -v canary. The canary version is always the latest commit to the main branch of Spin:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash -s -- -v canary

Homebrew

Install the Fermyon tap, which Homebrew tracks, updates, and installs Spin from:

$ brew tap fermyon/tap

Install Spin:

$ brew install fermyon/tap/spin

Note: brew install spin will not install Fermyon’s Spin framework. Fermyon Spin is accessed from the fermyon tap, as shown above.

Installer script

Another option (other than brew) is to use our installer script. The installer script installs Spin along with a starter set of language templates and plugins:

The installer script also installs Spin along with a starter set of language templates and plugins:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash

Once you have run the installer script, it is highly recommended to add Spin to a folder, which is on your path, e.g.:

$ sudo mv spin /usr/local/bin/

If you have already installed Spin by building from source, and then install it via the installer, we recommend you remove the older source install by running cargo uninstall spin-cli Otherwise the Cargo path may take precedence over the “install from binary” path, and commands may get the “wrong” version of Spin. Use spin --version to confirm the version on the PATH is the one you intend, or which spin to confirm the path it is found on.

To install a specific version (v1.2.3 is just an example), you can pass arguments to the install script this way:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash -s -- -v v1.2.3

To install the canary version of spin, you should pass the argument -v canary. The canary version is always the latest commit to the main branch of Spin:

$ curl -fsSL https://developer.fermyon.com/downloads/install.sh | bash -s -- -v canary

If using Windows (PowerShell / cmd.exe), you can download the Windows binary release of Spin.

Simply unzip the binary release and place the spin.exe in your system path.

This does not install any Spin templates or plugins. For a starter list, see the Installing Templates and Plugins section.

If you want to use WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2), please follow the instructions for using Linux.

Verifying the Release Signature

The Spin project signs releases using Sigstore, a project that helps with signing software and stores signatures in a tamper-resistant public log. Consumers of Spin releases can validate the integrity of the package they downloaded by performing a validation of the artifact against the signature present in the public log. Specifically, users get two main guarantees by verifying the signature: 1) that the author of the artifact is indeed the one expected (i.e. the build infrastructure associated with the Spin project, at a given revision that can be inspected), and 2) that the content generated by the build infrastructure has not been tampered with.

To verify the release signature, first configure Cosign v2.0.0+. This is the CLI tool that we will use validate the signature. The same directory where the installation script was run should also contain a signature of the Spin binary and the certificate used to perform the signature. The following command will perform the signature verification using the cosign CLI:

$ cosign verify-blob \
    --signature spin.sig \
    --certificate crt.pem \
    --certificate-identity https://github.com/fermyon/spin/.github/workflows/release.yml@refs/tags/<version> \
    --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
    # --certificate-github-workflow-sha <optionally, pass the commit SHA associated with the tag> \
    ./spin
Verified OK

You can now move the Spin binary to the path knowing that it was indeed built by the infrastructure associated with the Spin project, and that it has not been tampered with since the build.

Building Spin From Source

Follow the contribution document for a detailed guide on building Spin from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/fermyon/spin
$ cd spin && make build
$ ./target/release/spin --help

Please note: On a fresh Linux installation, you will also need the standard build toolchain (gcc, make, etc.), the SSL library headers, and on some distributions you may need pkg-config. For example, on Debian-like distributions, including Ubuntu, you can install the standard build toolchain with this command:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev pkg-config

This does not install any Spin templates or plugins. For a starter list, see the Installing Templates and Plugins section.

Using Cargo to Install Spin

If you have cargo, you can clone the repo and install it to your path.

Note: The main branch may have unstable or breaking changes. It is advised to check out the latest Spin release tag, which can be found by navigating to https://github.com/fermyon/spin/releases/latest.

$ git clone https://github.com/fermyon/spin
$ cd spin
$ # Check out the latest tagged release
$ # git checkout <latest release>
$ rustup target add wasm32-wasi
$ rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
$ cargo install --locked --path .
$ spin --help

Please note: Installing Spin v2.0 from source requires Rust 1.71.0 or newer. You can update Rust using the following command:

$ rustup update

This does not install any Spin templates or plugins. For a starter list, see the Installing Templates and Plugins section.

Installing Templates and Plugins

Spin has a variety of templates and plugins to make it easier to create Spin applications in your favorite programming language. The install script automatically installs a starter set of templates and plugins, namely templates from the Spin repository and JavaScript and Python toolchain plugins and the Fermyon Cloud plugin.

If you used a different installation method, we recommend you install these templates and plugins manually, as follows.

Templates

Spin:

$ spin templates install --git https://github.com/fermyon/spin --upgrade

Spin Python SDK

$ spin templates install --git https://github.com/fermyon/spin-python-sdk --upgrade

Spin JS SDK:

$ spin templates install --git https://github.com/fermyon/spin-js-sdk --upgrade

To list installed templates, run:

$ spin templates list

For more information please read the managing templates section of the documentation.

Plugins

First update the local cache by running the spin plugins update command:

$ spin plugins update

Then install plugins by name.

Python:

Historic: You may have seen a py2wasm plugin in your travels. Please note, that py2wasm has since been replaced by componentize-py. You no longer need to install additional tools as part of Spin installation. (Refer to Building Spin Components in Python for the new way of building Python applications.)

Javascript: