Download jq

jq is written in C and has no runtime dependencies, so it should be possible to build it for nearly any platform. Prebuilt binaries are available for Linux, OS X and Windows.

The binaries should just run, but on OS X and Linux you may need to make them executable first using chmod +x jq.

jq is licensed under the MIT license. For all of the gory details, read the file COPYING in the source distribution.

Linux

• jq 1.5 is in the official Debian and Ubuntu repositories. Install using sudo apt-get install jq.

• jq 1.5 is in the official Fedora repository. Install using sudo dnf install jq.

• jq 1.4 is in the official openSUSE repository. Install using sudo zypper install jq.

• jq 1.5 is in the official Arch repository. Install using sudo pacman -Sy jq.

• jq 1.5 binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit.

• jq 1.4 binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit.

• jq 1.3 binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit.

OS X

• Use Homebrew to install jq 1.5 with brew install jq.

• jq 1.5 binary for 64-bit.

• jq 1.4 binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit.

• jq 1.3 binaries for 64-bit or 32-bit.

FreeBSD

• Use FreshPorts to install jq 1.4 with pkg install jq.

Solaris

• pkgutil -i jq in OpenCSW for Solaris 10+, Sparc and x86.

• jq 1.4 binaries for Solaris 11 64-bit or 32-bit.

Windows

• Use Chocolatey NuGet to install jq 1.5 with chocolatey install jq.

• jq 1.5 executables for 64-bit or 32-bit.

• jq 1.4 executables for 64-bit or 32-bit.

• jq 1.3 executables for 64-bit or 32-bit.

Checksums and signatures

SHA-256 checksums are provided for all release and pre-release binaries. They can be found under sig/v1.x/sha256sum.txt. The checksums for jq 1.5 are in sig/v1.5/sha256sum.txt.

Additionally, all binaries are signed by the jq Package Signing Key. The signatures can be found under sig/v1.x/*.asc. The signatures for jq 1.5 are in sig/v1.5/*.asc. You can use GnuPG to verify a signature by downloading the signature and running gpg --verify signature.asc.

From source on Linux, OS X, Cygwin, and other POSIX-like operating systems

• Source tarball for jq 1.5

You can build it using the usual ./configure && make && sudo make install rigmarole.

If you’re interested in using the lastest development version, try:

git clone https://github.com/stedolan/jq.git
cd jq
autoreconf -i
./configure --disable-maintainer-mode
make
sudo make install

To build it from a git clone, you’ll need to install a few packages first:

• GCC
• Make
• Autotools

For Linux systems, these will all be in your system’s package manager, and if you do development on the machine they’re most likely already installed.

On OS X, these are all included in Apple’s command line tools, which can be installed from Xcode. However, you may find that you need a newer version of Bison than the one provided by Apple. This can be found in Homebrew or MacPorts.

The --disable-maintainer-mode flag says to use the pre-generated lexer and parser that come with the code. To compile the lexer and parser also from source, leave out this flag. You will need to install Flex and Bison.

Building the documentation

jq’s documentation is compiled into static HTML using Bonsai. To view the documentation locally, run rake serve (or bundle exec rake serve) from the docs/ subdirectory. To build the docs just rake build from the docs subdirectory. You’ll need a few Ruby dependencies, which can be installed by following the instructions in docs/README.md.

The man page is built by make jq.1, or just make, also from the YAML docs, and you’ll still need the Ruby dependencies to build the manpage.