Install

Conan can be installed in many Operating Systems. It has been extensively used and tested in Windows, Linux (different distros), OSX, and is also actively used in FreeBSD and Solaris SunOS. There are also several additional operating systems on which it has been reported to work.

There are three ways to install Conan:

  1. The preferred and strongly recommended way to install Conan is from PyPI, the Python Package Index, using the pip command.

  2. There are other available installers for different systems, which might come with a bundled python interpreter, so that you don’t have to install python first. Note that some of these installers might have some limitations, especially those created with pyinstaller (such as Windows exe & Linux deb).

  3. Running Conan from sources.

Install from brew (OSX)

There is a brew recipe, so in OSX, you can install Conan as follows:

$ brew update
$ brew install conan

Install from AUR (Arch Linux)

The easiest way to install Conan on Arch Linux is by using one of the Arch User Repository (AUR) helpers, e.g., yay, aurman, or pakku. For example, the following command installs Conan using yay:

$ yay -S conan

Alternatively, build and install Conan manually using makepkg and pacman as described in the Arch Wiki. Conan build files can be downloaded from AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/conan/. Make sure to first install the three Conan dependencies which are also found in AUR:

  • python-patch-ng

  • python-node-semver

  • python-pluginbase

Install the binaries

Go to the conan website and download the installer for your platform!

Execute the installer. You don’t need to install python.

Initial configuration

Check if Conan is installed correctly. Run the following command in your console:

$ conan

The response should be similar to:

Consumer commands
  install    Installs the requirements specified in a recipe (conanfile.py or conanfile.txt).
  config     Manages Conan configuration.
  get        Gets a file or list a directory of a given reference or package.
  info       Gets information about the dependency graph of a recipe.
  ...

Tip

If you are using Bash, there is a bash autocompletion project created by the community for Conan commands: https://gitlab.com/akim.saidani/conan-bashcompletion

Install from source

You can run Conan directly from source code. First, you need to install Python 2.7 or Python 3 and pip.

Clone (or download and unzip) the git repository and install its requirements:

$ git clone https://github.com/conan-io/conan.git
$ cd conan
$ pip install -r conans/requirements.txt

Create a script to run Conan and add it to your PATH.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys

conan_repo_path = "/home/your_user/conan" # ABSOLUTE PATH TO CONAN REPOSITORY FOLDER

sys.path.append(conan_repo_path)
from conans.client.command import main
main(sys.argv[1:])

Test your conan script.

$ conan

You should see the Conan commands help.

Update

If installed via pip, Conan can be easily updated:

$ pip install conan --upgrade  # Might need sudo or --user

If installed via the installers (.exe, .deb), download the new installer and execute it.

The default <userhome>/.conan/settings.yml file, containing the definition of compiler versions, etc., will be upgraded if Conan does not detect local changes, otherwise it will create a settings.yml.new with the new settings. If you want to regenerate the settings, you can remove the settings.yml file manually and it will be created with the new information the first time it is required.

The upgrade shouldn’t affect the installed packages or cache information. If the cache becomes inconsistent somehow, you may want to remove its content by deleting it (<userhome>/.conan).

Python 2 Deprecation Notice

All features of Conan until version 1.6 are fully supported in both Python 2 and Python 3. However, new features in upcoming Conan releases that are only available in Python 3 or more easily available in Python 3 will be implemented and tested only in Python 3, and versions of Conan using Python 2 will not have access to that feature. This will be clearly described in code and documentation.

If and when Conan 2.x is released, the level of compatibility with Python 2 may be reduced further.

We encourage you to upgrade to Python 3 as soon as possible. However, if this is impossible for you or your team, we would like to know it. Please give feedback in the Conan issue tracker or write us to info@conan.io.