Installing Pelican
macOS

Install Pelican on MacOS

This document explains how to install Pelican on MacOS.

Install Pelican as a Standalone Executable

Pelican provides a binary executable file instead of a DMG installer for MacOS, so installation must happen through a terminal. This process entails downloading/extracting the executable and adding it to your computer's PATH environment variable.

  1. If you've not yet determined which executable you need, refer to the download page and copy the relevant link: In the Operating System section, select macOS. In Architectures section, select X86_64 or ARM64 depending on the architecture of your machine.

    Note: If you don't know your computer's architecture, click the Apple menu  in the top-left corner of your screen, then click About This Mac and check the Chip or Processor field. If it mentions Intel your computer needs Pelican's X86_64 executable, and if it mentions Apple M1, M2, or later, you'll need the ARM64 executable. Intel Macs (x86_64) should see the file pelican_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz and Apple Silicon Macs (ARM64) should see pelican_Darwin_arm64.tar.gz.

  2. Open a terminal and navigate to a directory where you can download, extract and store the Pelican executable. Then use your command line tools of choice to download and extract the link you copied in the previous step. The rest of these intructions assume curl for downloading and tar for extraction:

    curl -LO <replace-with-the-link-you-copied>
tar -zxvf <name-of-downloaded-file>

    Example to install Pelican executable for an Apple Silicon Mac:

    curl -LO https://github.com/PelicanPlatform/pelican/releases/download/v7.10.5/pelican_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz
tar -zxvf pelican_Darwin_arm64.tar.gz

  3. There should now be another directory called pelican-<version> containing a Pelican executable that you can run directly using a relative ./ path. For example:

    $ cd pelican-7.10.5
$ ./pelican --version # Print the executable version
 
Version: 7.10.8
Build Date: 2024-10-09T14:56:56Z
Build Commit: 1ef2c25a1585803e0c74a9e41fceb214b80bf3da
Built By: goreleaser

    However, to make the pelican command available everywhere on your Mac without needing a relative path, you still need to add it to your system's PATH environment variable.

Add Pelican Executable to Your PATH

  • Add the Pelican executable to your PATH for the current terminal session (disappears after closing the terminal)

    $ cd pelican-7.10.5 # Go to the executable folder
$ export PATH=$PWD:$PATH # Add current folder to the PATH
$ pelican --version # Run Pelican executable
 
Version: 7.10.8
Build Date: 2024-10-09T14:56:56Z
Build Commit: 1ef2c25a1585803e0c74a9e41fceb214b80bf3da
Built By: goreleaser

  • Add the Pelican executable to your PATH permanently (persists through terminal restarts)

    $ cd pelican-7.10.5 # Go to the executable folder
$ echo "export PATH=$PWD:\$PATH" >> ~/.zshrc # Add the current folder to your .zshrc file
$ source ~/.zshrc # Apply the change
$ pelican --version # Run Pelican executable
 
Version: 7.10.8
Build Date: 2024-10-09T14:56:56Z
Build Commit: 1ef2c25a1585803e0c74a9e41fceb214b80bf3da
Built By: goreleaser

Next steps

Linux Standalone BinaryWindows