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Installation

Installation

You’ll be installing one thing: the lemmego command. It is the tool you use to create a project, run it while you work on it, generate files and apply database changes — so everything else in these docs starts with it being on your PATH.

Prerequisites

You’ll want to be comfortable with Go. Beyond that:

  • Go 1.27 or newer — required, not optional. The ORM uses generic methods, which only exist from 1.27.
  • Node.js — only if you are building a frontend with JavaScript or CSS. Lemmego bundles those with Vite, which runs on Node. A Go-templates-only project does not need it.
  • Air — watches your .go files and rebuilds and restarts your application when you save one, so you are not stopping and starting it by hand. Only needed for lemmego dev.
  • Templ — optional. A template language that compiles your templates into Go code, so a typo in a field name is a build error rather than a blank space on the page. Skip it unless you choose a Templ frontend.

Installing the CLI

With those in place, install the CLI:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lemmego/cli/refs/heads/main/installer.sh | sudo sh

Install from source

If you have Go installed, you can build the CLI yourself:

go install github.com/lemmego/cli/cmd@latest

This installs a binary called cmd, after the package’s directory name. Rename it to lemmego before using the rest of these docs:

mv "$(go env GOPATH)/bin/cmd" "$(go env GOPATH)/bin/lemmego"

Make sure $GOPATH/bin is in your PATH.

A binary installed this way reports its module version; one built from a checkout reports dev+<commit>.

Installer options

Both installers resolve the latest release automatically and verify the download checksum. Two environment variables override that:

VariableEffect
LEMMEGO_VERSIONInstall a specific tag instead of the latest, e.g. v0.4.1
LEMMEGO_INSTALL_DIRInstall somewhere other than /usr/local/bin (C:\Windows\System32 on Windows)
# Pin a version, and install without sudo
LEMMEGO_VERSION=v0.4.1 LEMMEGO_INSTALL_DIR=$HOME/.local/bin \
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lemmego/cli/refs/heads/main/installer.sh | sh

Verify Installation

Run the following to confirm the CLI is installed:

lemmego --version

Expected output:

version [x.x.x]

Next Steps

Now that the CLI is installed, proceed to the Quick Start guide to create your first project.

GlossaryQuick Start