Commands

This section describes the Conan built-in commands, like conan install or conan search.

It is also possible to create user custom commands, visit custom commands reference and these custom command examples

Consumer commands:

• conan cache: Return the path of recipes and packages in the cache

• conan config: Manage Conan configuration (remotes, settings, plugins, etc)

• conan graph: Obtain information about the dependency graph without fetching binaries

• conan inspect: Inspect a conanfile.py to return the public fields

• conan install: Install dependencies

• conan list: List recipes, revisions and packages in the local cache or in remotes

• conan lock: Create and manage lockfiles

• conan pkglist: Manipulate package lists, merge them or find packages in remotes.

• conan profile: Display and manage profile files

• conan remove: Remove packages from the local cache or from remotes

• conan remote: Add, remove, login/logout and manage remote server

• conan search: Search packages matching a name

• conan version: Give information about the Conan client version

• conan workspace: Manage Conan workspaces

• conan run: Execute binaries with automatic environment activation

• conan require: Adds/removes requirements to/from your local conanfile

Creator commands:

• conan build: Install package and call its build method

• conan create: Create a package from a recipe

• conan download: Download (without install) a single conan package from a remote server.

• conan editable: Allows working with a package in user folder

• conan export: Export a recipe to the Conan package cache

• conan export-pkg: Create a package directly from pre-compiled binaries

• conan new: Create a new recipe from a predefined template

• conan source: Calls the source() method

• conan test: Test a package

• conan upload: Upload packages from the local cache to a specified remote

Security Commands

• conan audit: Checks for vulnerabilities in your Conan packages.

• conan report: Get information about the packages

Commands Output to stdout and stderr

Conan commands output information following a deliberate design choice that aligns with common practices in many CLI tools and the POSIX standard:

• stdout: For final command results (e.g., JSON, HTML).

• stderr: For diagnostic output, including logs, warnings, errors, and progress messages.

More info can be found more in the FAQ section.

Redirecting Output to Files

You can redirect Conan output to files using shell redirection:

$ conan install . --format=json > output.json

Alternatively, use the --out-file argument (available since Conan 2.12.0) to specify an output file directly:

$ conan install . --format=json --out-file=output.json

Command formatters

Almost all the commands have the parameter --format xxxx which is used to apply an output conversion. The command formatters help users see the command output in a different way that could fit better with their needs. Here, there are only some of the most important ones whose details are worthy of having a separate section.

• graph-info formatter: Show the graph information in JSON format. It’s used by several commands.