FoxByte
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Install FoxByte

One command installs the fox CLI. A second brings up PostgreSQL 18, branching, the Blackbox and the console, in a few minutes the first time. Day to day, everything is a fox command on every system.

Terminal
$ brew install lima
$ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | sh
$ fox setup

fox setup creates a dedicated Lima VM with Docker and ZFS and brings everything up. The first run downloads Ubuntu, which takes a few minutes.

Requirements

What you need

The first setup takes a few minutes while it downloads the engine and, on macOS and Windows, a Linux image. Offline and air-gapped installs aren’t supported yet: the installer fetches the CLI from GitHub releases and the engine images from GHCR.

macOS

Apple silicon or Intel. Lima runs the local Linux VM (brew install lima); Docker and ZFS are set up inside it for you.

Linux

arm64 or amd64, run with sudo. ZFS and Docker are provisioned the first time the engine starts.

Windows

Windows 10 21H2 or later, or Windows 11, with virtualisation enabled. WSL is installed if it is missing, with a dedicated distro on btrfs.

After install

Your first five minutes

  1. 1

    The console opens

    https://localhost:8080 opens by itself with a one-time setup token in the link. Choose an email and a password.

  2. 2

    Make an API key

    On the API keys page, or fox apikey create. The key is the password in your connection string.

  3. 3

    Branch

    main already has three sample tables. fox branch create qa gives you a copy to break.

  4. 4

    Check the install

    fox check says whether everything is healthy, and what to run when something is not.

Verify a release

Know what you installed

Every release’s SHA256SUMS is signed with the FoxByte release key, which the installer checks where OpenSSL can. Each file has a GitHub build attestation, and each release an SBOM.

The release key’s fingerprint is on the Security page. On macOS, set FOX_REQUIRE_SIGNATURE=1 to stop rather than warn when the signature cannot be checked.

$ gh attestation verify fox-darwin-arm64 --repo thefoxbyte/foxbyte
Updates

The one call home, and how to turn it off

fox start asks GitHub whether a newer release exists. It sends nothing about your data. Turn it off for good with one setting.

$ export FOX_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1
Enterprise

Install the Enterprise edition

The same engine with the Enterprise features compiled in. Without a licence it behaves exactly like Standard, and you can switch an existing install in place.

$ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | FOX_EDITION=enterprise sh
$ fox upgrade --edition enterprise
From source

Build it yourself

For contributors. Set FOX_NO_REFRESH=1 when running fox setup from a source build, so it keeps your local engine.

$ make build
$ make vm-build
$ FOX_NO_REFRESH=1 fox setup

Need a hand getting started?

The quickstart walks through connecting your app, making keys and your first branch.

$ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | sh
Install FoxByteRead the docs