Install

The Trunk launcher

Trunk uses a launcher to automatically install the appropriate CLI for your platform. The launcher is a bash script that downloads the appropriate Trunk CLI version and runs it. The launcher invisibly runs the Trunk CLI version specified in a project's .trunk/trunk.yaml file. The actual Trunk CLI is a single binary that is cached locally in ~/.cache/trunk and is updated automatically.

Install the launcher

The Trunk CLI can be installed in many different ways, depending on your use case.

Using NPM

If your project uses a package.json, you can specify the Trunk Launcher as a dependency so your developers can start using Trunk after installing Node dependencies.

npm

npm install -D @trunkio/launcher

pnpm

yarn

bun

Then add Trunk Launcher in your package.json as a script:

{
  "scripts": {
    "trunk": "trunk",
    "lint": "trunk check",
    "fmt": "trunk fmt"
  }
}

Using cURL

You can install the Trunk Launcher script directly by downloading it through cURL. The launcher script supports both macOS and Linux environments.

To allow your teammates to use trunk without installing anything, the launcher can be committed directly into your repo:

curl -LO https://trunk.io/releases/trunk
chmod +x trunk
git commit ./trunk -m "Commit Trunk to our repo"

When the launcher is called for the first time by your teammates, the Trunk Launcher will download, manage, and run the appropriate binary for the environment.

Using Homebrew

You can run the following command if you prefer to install this tool via homebrew. Keep in mind that other developers on your team will also have to install manually.

brew install trunk-io

Using Windows

From git-bash or msys2, download the Bash launcher and add it to your PATH:

curl https://get.trunk.io -fsSL | bash

From powershell, download the powershell launcher:

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://trunk.io/releases/trunk.ps1 -OutFile trunk.ps1

Ensure you can execute powershell scripts:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope CurrentUser

You can then execute trunk as .\trunk.ps1.

Compatibility

Trunk only supports Windows with the following versions and above:

Tool	Where to Modify	Minimum Required Version
CLI	cli version in .trunk/trunk.yaml	1.13.0
Plugins	ref for the trunk plugin in .trunk/trunk.yaml	v1.0.0
VSCode	Reload VSCode to update	3.4.4

You will also need to install C and C++ runtime libraries in order to run some linters.

Uninstall instructions

From your system

Trunk has a very minimal installation, and therefore, there's not much to uninstall. The two system paths we use are:

• /usr/local/bin/trunk: the Trunk Launcher

• ~/.cache/trunk: cached versions of the trunk cli, linters, formatters, etc.

You can delete those two paths to uninstall.

From a repo

To cleanly remove Trunk from a particular repo, run:

trunk deinit

VS Code extension

To uninstall the Trunk VS Code extension, do so as you would any extension (docs). Then reload VS Code.

Binary download (not recommended)

You can directly download the trunk binary. We don't recommend this mode of operation because your ability to version the tool through trunk.yaml will not function when launching trunk directly from a downloaded binary. Regardless you can bypass the launcher support by downloading the prebuilt binaries here:

variable	options
version	the semver of the binary you want to download
platform	'darwin`, 'linux'

# for example https://trunk.io/releases/1.0.0/trunk-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
https://trunk.io/releases/${version}/trunk-${version}-${platform}-x86_64.tar.gz

Pre-installing tools

Trunk hermetically manages all the tools that it runs. To do this, it will download and install them into its cache folder only when they are needed. If you would like to ensure that all tools are installed ahead of time, then you can use the trunk install command. This may be useful if you want to prepare to work offline or if you would like to include the tools in a docker image. On Linux and macOS you may find the cache folder at $HOME/.cache/trunk.