Development builds

If you would like to help in the development & testing of fish, or you have a problem, you might want to run a development build, sometimes known as a "nightly" build. Development builds are the latest version of the source which has been compiled using the same build architecture as released software. In some projects, they are created every night (hence the term nightly), although our projects creates them more regularly than that.

Although we do our best to make sure that the code in the repository is always in a good state, sometimes developers introduce bugs or new behavior. To run a development build, you should always have an alternative shell such as bash or zsh installed on your computer, and be comfortable with how to start it if fish is not working. You should also be subscribed to the mailing list, and willing to report bugs either on GitHub or to the mailing list.

If you would like to provide development builds for a platform not listed here, please let us know.

macOS

To build and install the latest fish code, use Homebrew:

brew install --HEAD fish

Note that this will not keep you up-to-date, and you may need to frequently run a command such as:

brew remove fish; and brew install --HEAD fish

Because of the way Homebrew installs new versions, you will need to exec fish in all running shells, or restart all instances.

Linux

On several Linux-based platforms, binary builds are created within 30 minutes of code being checked in. You can check the status of the build service at the openSUSE Build Service page and the Ubuntu PPA.

The links below will add the repository to your system, allowing the package to be automatically kept up to date.

Development builds are currently available on the following platforms:

• Ubuntu (all supported releases except Trusty) - Install using Ubuntu PPA
• Debian (all supported releases) - Install using openSUSE Build Service
• openSUSE (all supported releases) - Install using openSUSE Build Service
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (versions 6 and 7) - these packages should install cleanly on CentOS 6 & 7, too - Install using openSUSE Build Service
• CentOS (version 8) - these packages should install cleanly on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, too - Install using openSUSE Build Service
• Fedora (all supported releases) - Install using openSUSE Build Service
• Arch - via the AUR fish-git package (note this will not keep itself up-to-date)

Ubuntu PPA instructions

Provided through the fish-shell PPA.

Execute the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fish-shell/nightly-master
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fish

If the above command errors, you're missing the python-software-properties package. In that case, run the commands below before retrying the commands above:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties