Skip to content

Getting Started

Pixi with magic wand

Pixi is a package management tool for developers. It allows the developer to install libraries and applications in a reproducible way. Use pixi cross-platform, on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Installation#

To install pixi you can run the following command in your terminal:

curl -fsSL https://pixi.sh/install.sh | bash

The above invocation will automatically download the latest version of pixi, extract it, and move the pixi binary to ~/.pixi/bin. If this directory does not already exist, the script will create it.

The script will also update your ~/.bash_profile to include ~/.pixi/bin in your PATH, allowing you to invoke the pixi command from anywhere.

PowerShell: 

iwr -useb https://pixi.sh/install.ps1 | iex
winget: 
winget install prefix-dev.pixi
The above invocation will automatically download the latest version of pixi, extract it, and move the pixi binary to LocalAppData/pixi/bin. If this directory does not already exist, the script will create it.

The command will also automatically add LocalAppData/pixi/bin to your path allowing you to invoke pixi from anywhere.

Tip

You might need to restart your terminal or source your shell for the changes to take effect.

Autocompletion#

To get autocompletion run:

# Pick your shell (use `echo $SHELL` to find the shell you are using.):
echo 'eval "$(pixi completion --shell bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(pixi completion --shell zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'pixi completion --shell fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
echo 'eval (pixi completion --shell elvish | slurp)' >> ~/.elvish/rc.elv

PowerShell: 

Add-Content -Path $PROFILE -Value '(& pixi completion --shell powershell) | Out-String | Invoke-Expression'

And then restart the shell or source the shell config file.

Alternative installation methods#

Although we recommend installing pixi through the above method we also provide additional installation methods.

Homebrew#

Pixi is available via homebrew. To install pixi via homebrew simply run:

brew install pixi

Windows installer#

We provide an msi installer on our Github releases page. The installer will download pixi and add it to the path.

Install from source#

pixi is 100% written in Rust, and therefore it can be installed, built and tested with cargo. To start using pixi from a source build run:

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/prefix-dev/pixi.git

or when you want to make changes use:

cargo build
cargo test

If you have any issues building because of the dependency on rattler checkout it's compile steps

Update#

Updating is as simple as installing, rerunning the installation script gets you the latest version.

curl -fsSL https://pixi.sh/install.sh | bash
Or get a specific pixi version using: 
export PIXI_VERSION=vX.Y.Z && curl -fsSL https://pixi.sh/install.sh | bash

PowerShell: 

iwr -useb https://pixi.sh/install.ps1 | iex
Or get a specific pixi version using: PowerShell: 
$Env:PIXI_VERSION="vX.Y.Z"; iwr -useb https://pixi.sh/install.ps1 | iex

Note

If you used a package manager like brew, mamba, conda, paru to install pixi. Then use their builtin update mechanism. e.g. brew update && brew upgrade pixi

Uninstall#

To uninstall pixi from your system, simply remove the binary.

rm ~/.pixi/bin/pixi

$PIXI_BIN = "$Env:LocalAppData\pixi\bin\pixi"; Remove-Item -Path $PIXI_BIN

After this command, you can still use the tools you installed with pixi. To remove these as well, just remove the whole ~/.pixi directory and remove the directory from your path.