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Installation

Pinfit installs as a self-contained bundle for Windows (x64), Linux (x64 and arm64) and macOS (Intel and Apple silicon). You do not need Java, Maven or anything else installed.

Java is bundled, not required

Pinfit is written in Java, but every release bundle carries its own trimmed Java runtime (about 20 MB, made with jlink), and the pinfit launcher only ever uses that runtime. A Java you may already have, JAVA_HOME and PATH make no difference to it — installing or upgrading some other Java can't break Pinfit, and Pinfit never touches yours.

Every version tag is built and tested by CI and published as a GitHub Release with the JAR and a SHA256SUMS checksum file attached.

In PowerShell, one line installs the newest release:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/daoek/Pinfit/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

To pin a specific version, download scripts/install.ps1 and run it with that version (latest also works):

.\install.ps1 -Version 0.1.0

If PowerShell blocks the downloaded script

When your machine's default execution policy refuses to run a local .ps1, invoke it through an explicitly scoped bypass instead:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1 -Version 0.1.0

That flag applies only to the single powershell.exe invocation it is passed to. It does not change the execution policy for your machine or your user account.

One line installs the newest release:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/daoek/Pinfit/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

To pin a specific version, pass it through to the script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/daoek/Pinfit/main/scripts/install.sh | sh -s -- --version 0.1.0

"Newest" means the newest stable release, or - while only prereleases exist - the newest prerelease. The one-liners fetch the installer from main; if you would rather read it before running it, download it first and run the file instead.

The script picks the bundle for your OS and CPU (pinfit-<version>-windows-x64.zip, -linux-x64.tar.gz, -linux-aarch64.tar.gz, -macos-x64.tar.gz or -macos-aarch64.tar.gz), downloads it and SHA256SUMS over HTTPS from GitHub, verifies its SHA-256 against the published checksum, and installs it only if the checksum matches. Nothing is written to disk otherwise. Re-running it upgrades in place: the old installation, runtime included, is replaced as a whole. At the end it prints the installed JAR's checksum.

Releases published before the bundled runtime was introduced (up to 0.1.0-beta.4) have no bundle and cannot be installed with this script.

Build and install from source

For contributors, or to install an unreleased build. Requires a JDK 17 or newer (with jlink, which every standard JDK has) and Maven — the one case where Java is needed, since it compiles Pinfit and builds the runtime that gets bundled.

git clone https://github.com/daoek/Pinfit.git
cd Pinfit
mvn clean package

That produces target/pinfit-<version>.jar (the version comes from pom.xml), which already contains SnakeYAML and can be copied anywhere without a separate dependency directory. You can run it directly:

java -jar target/pinfit-*.jar --help

To install it as a pinfit command instead, run the same installer from the repository root with no version:

.\scripts\install.ps1

./scripts/install.sh

In this mode the script builds the bundle locally (mvn -Pbundle clean package: the jar, a jlink runtime from your JDK, and the launcher, in target/bundle) rather than downloading anything, then installs that.

VS Code task

Press Ctrl+Shift+B and run the default Pinfit: Package + Install task to rebuild, test, package and update the installed command in one step (Windows).

What the installer touches

Both modes, on both platforms, behave the same way:

  • Runs entirely as your user — no administrator/sudo rights needed.
  • Is marker-gated: it refuses to overwrite a directory it did not create itself, and the matching uninstall script refuses to remove anything without that same marker present.
  • Writes only inside the install directory itself:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Pinfit by default, or wherever -InstallDirectory points — and adds that one directory to your user PATH (via the registry, so no file is edited for this).

$HOME/.local/share/Pinfit by default, or wherever --install-dir points. Unlike the Windows registry, editing a shell profile to add to PATH means picking a file among several (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile, ...) and guessing which one you actually use — this script does not do that for you. If the install directory isn't already on PATH, it prints the one line to add yourself:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/share/Pinfit:$PATH"

The installed copy is independent from target/, so mvn clean will not remove it. Re-run the installer in either mode to update it.

Verify

Open a new terminal (or, on Linux/macOS, source your profile) so the updated PATH is picked up:

pinfit --help
Expected output
Pinfit - YAML-driven C interface and module generator

Usage: pinfit <command> [options]

Commands:
  init             Create a new pinfit.yaml project
  create           Scaffold a new interface, module, or other spec
  ...

See the CLI reference for the full command list.

Uninstall

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Pinfit\Uninstall-Pinfit.ps1"

install.sh copies its own uninstall.sh into the install directory, so:

~/.local/share/Pinfit/uninstall.sh

This removes the install directory (and, on Windows, its PATH entry). It does not touch any project: your pinfit.yaml files and generated C code stay exactly as they are. To remove Pinfit from a project, use pinfit detach.

Why a bundled runtime, not a single native binary

A GraalVM native-image binary would be smaller still, but SnakeYAML's YAML parsing leans on reflection in places native-image needs explicit reachability metadata for. A jlink runtime runs the exact jar the tests run, with no such risk. It contains only the two JDK modules Pinfit uses (java.base and java.logging).

Running without installing

Every release also publishes the plain pinfit-<version>.jar. If you already have Java 17 or newer, you can run that directly instead of installing — substitute it for pinfit in every command:

java -jar path/to/pinfit-<version>.jar generate