crimson nightly

Crimson

Crystal version management made easy

Installation

MacOS

brew tap crimson-crystal/distribution https://github.com/crimson-crystal/distribution
brew install crimson

Windows

scoop bucket add crimson https://github.com/crimson-crystal/distribution
scoop install crimson

From Release

See the releases page for available packaged binaries.

Linux

curl -L https://github.com/crimson-crystal/crimson/releases/download/nightly/crimson-nightly-linux-x86_64.tar.gz -o crimson.tar.gz
tar -xvf crimson.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin

Windows (PowerShell)

Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/crimson-crystal/crimson/releases/download/nightly/crimson-nightly-windows-x86_64-msvc.zip" -OutFile crimson.zip
Expand-Archive .\crimson.zip .

[!IMPORTANT] Make sure to add the crimson.exe and crimson.pdb files to a directory in PATH.

From Source

Crystal version 1.9.2 or higher is required to build Crimson. Make sure to add the bin/ directory to PATH or move the Crimson binaries to a directory in PATH.

git clone https://github.com/crimson-crystal/crimson
cd crimson
shards build

Usage

To get started, simply run crimson setup. This will setup the necessary configuration files and directories for Crimson, update your system to make the crystal and shards executables available and prompt you to install the necessary build dependencies for Crystal. You can bypass the prompts by including the -y/--yes flag, or skip dependency installation by including the -s/--skip-dependencies flag.

[!NOTE] Crystal's dependencies are not typically readily available on most systems so you will need to install them manually if you choose to skip them in the command.

Next, install Crystal using crimson install (or crimson in). By default this will install the latest available version unless you specify one (for example, crimson install 1.9.2). You can install any Crystal version that is available on the Crystal GitHub releases page. This unfortunately means that nightly builds cannot be installed via Crimson yet.

Finally, run the crimson switch <version> command to make that version of Crystal available on your system. You can also do this automatically by including the -s/--switch flag in crimson install. Now, try crystal version! To put this in perspective, you just setup and installed Crystal with 3 simple commands:

crimson setup
crimson install 1.9.2
crimson switch 1.9.2

Aliases

Versions can be aliased to make using them easier: run crimson alias <name> <version> to set an alias for a specific version (for example, crimson alias dev 1.9.2). You can view all aliases with crimson alias and delete an alias with crimson alias -d <name>. Aliases can also be set automatically by including the -a/--alias flag.

Switching

You can switch between Crystal versions using crimson switch <version> (or crimson use). If the version you wish to switch to has an alias, you can use that instead (for example, crimson switch dev). Versions can also be switched to automatically in the install command by including the -s/--switch flag. If you want to temporarily remove the current version from your system (for example, if you wanted to revert to a local install of Crystal) you can do so with crimson switch -d. This doesn't uninstall the Crystal version entirely, meaning you can easily switch back to it at any time.

Defaults

What if you frequently install or switch versions and need a default available? You can set one using crimson default <version>. This also supports using aliases in place of the version.

But how exactly does it work? Lets say you have 1.9.2 as default and you're working with version 1.7.3 but no longer need it, so you remove it. Crimson will automatically switch back to the configured default so that you still have a version of Crystal available on your system.

You can also easily switch between your current and default version using crimson switch . which will set the former to the latter. Defaults can be removed using crimson default -d.

Removing

Removing Crystal versions is as simple as crimson remove <version> (or crimson rm), and you can use the alias in place of the version.

Useful Tricks

All the above commands can be combined via flags in the install command:

crimson install -sa dev 1.9.2
#                ^^
#                /\
#     switch to /  set the alias to "dev"
#  this version

crimson install -fd
# install the latest version and make it the default

crimson install -a legacy -ds 1.0.0
#                ^         ^^
#  set the alias /         |\ switch to this version
#  to "legacy"             \
#                           make it the default

Side Notes

Crimson caches available versions locally from the Crystal API so if newer releases don't appear as available via Crimson, run the install command with the -f/--fetch flag which will force-check the API and cache newer versions. If that doesn't work, check the API as it's likely it hasn't been updated to include the newer versions yet.

Motivation

Crimson is designed to be like any other application versioning manager using standardised design patterns to ensure consistency and flexibility. It is intended for people that work with multiple versions of Crystal and/or need to ensure backwards compatibility for their projects. It is not intended to be a replacement for system package managers or other Crystal distribution sources (although you can use it for that if you wish).

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/crimson-crystal/crimson/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• Devonte W - creator and maintainer

This repository is managed under the Mozilla Public License v2.

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