Installing maru

maru ships as a single static binary with no runtime dependencies. It is about 1.8 MB, links nothing dynamically, and runs the same on Linux and macOS. There is no daemon, no background service, and nothing that phones home.

Install the binary

The install script downloads the release for your platform, verifies its checksum, and places maru on your PATH:

curl -fsSL https://get.maru.build | sh

If you prefer a package manager, maru is published to Homebrew and to the standard Linux repositories:

brew install maru
# or
apt install maru

Verify the download

Every release is signed and its digest is published in the release notes. The --verify flag re-hashes the running binary and prints its content address so you can compare it against what you expected to install:

maru --version
# maru 0.9.3 (blake3:9f2a…c14e)

maru --verify
# binary digest matches the published release for 0.9.3

Because maru identifies everything by content, the binary is no exception: the digest above becomes part of every cache key, so upgrading the tool correctly invalidates only the tasks whose behavior could have changed.

Scaffold a project

maru init writes a minimal maru.toml and a first task so you have something to build immediately:

maru init
maru build

You now have an empty but valid graph. The next guide, Your first build, replaces the placeholder task with a real one and shows how maru decides what to run. If anything above failed, run maru doctor — it checks your PATH, the cache directory, and sandbox support, and prints a fix for each problem it finds.