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.
jq uses a C library for decimal number support. This is an ICU 1.8.1 licensed code obtained from the ICU downloads archive http://download.icu-project.org/files/decNumber/decNumber-icu-368.zip.
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 -S jq.
Use Homebrew to install jq 1.6 with
brew install jq.
Use MacPorts to install jq 1.6 with
port install jq.
jq 1.6 binary for 64-bit.
jq 1.5 binary for 64-bit.
pkg install jq as root installs a pre-built
binary package.
make -C /usr/ports/textproc/jq install clean as root installs the
jq
port
from source.
pkgutil -i jq in OpenCSW for Solaris
10+, Sparc and x86.
Use Chocolatey NuGet to install jq 1.5 with
chocolatey install jq.
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 1.6 are in sig/v1.6/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 1.6 are in
sig/v1.5/*.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.
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:
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.
jq's documentation is compiled into static HTML using Python.
To build the docs, run pipenv run python3 build_website.py from
the docs/ subdirectory. To serve them locally, you can run
python3 -m SimpleHTTPServer. You'll need a few Python 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 Python dependencies to
build the manpage.