chan

Install Choices

Use Chan Desktop for normal local editing. Use the standalone CLI when you want a terminal-first server, an SSH workflow, or explicit chan serve control.

Desktop

The public install page reads release metadata from chan.app/dl/ and links the active desktop artifacts from that metadata:

  • macOS DMG
  • Linux AppImage
  • Linux deb

Desktop packages are built by the desktop release workflow. The shell installer does not install desktop packages. If metadata is unavailable, the install page falls back to the GitHub Releases page.

Standalone CLI

The POSIX installer installs only the chan CLI. The script is served from chan.app, reads complete-release metadata from chan.app/dl/cli/, and downloads the matching asset URL named by that metadata:

curl -fsSL https://chan.app/install.sh | sh

The active CLI release targets are:

  • Linux x86_64
  • Linux aarch64
  • macOS aarch64

Use PREFIX to choose the install prefix:

PREFIX=/usr/local sudo sh install.sh

Use METADATA_URL to test a local or mirrored metadata file:

METADATA_URL=/tmp/chan-cli-latest.json sh install.sh

Use BASE to point at another metadata directory. With VERSION, the installer reads v<version>.json from that directory:

BASE=https://mirror.example/dl/cli VERSION=0.14.0 sh install.sh

Unsupported OS and architecture pairs fail explicitly.

Release Metadata

The static metadata files published under chan.app/dl/ describe complete releases after all GitHub Release assets exist.

  • /dl/releases.json feeds the install page download links.
  • /dl/cli/latest.json and /dl/cli/vX.Y.Z.json feed the shell installer

and chan upgrade.

  • /dl/desktop/latest.json and /dl/desktop/vX.Y.Z.json feed the desktop

updater.

Metadata points at concrete GitHub Release asset URLs. The site and installer do not guess URLs from tags or Cargo versions.