Cardano Homebrew tap

This is a Homebrew tap to install the Cardano node, and some associated tools.

Prerequisites

You only need to have previously installed Homebrew, which supports MacOS and Linux.

Precompiled binaries are provided for MacOS Tahoe and Sequoia on Silicon (ARM), Ubuntu 22.04 on x86 and Ubuntu 24.04 on ARM. On some other platforms installation may require about 20 minutes if it entails compiling from source.

Installation

To install the Cardano node (10.6.1) and CLI:

brew install notunrandom/cardano/cardano-node

To install these tools to analyse, manipulate or generate chain and ledger DB's (for a 10.6.1 node):

• db-analyser
• snapshot-converter
• db-synthesizer
• db-truncater
• db-immutaliser
• immdb-server

brew install notunrandom/cardano/consensus-db-tools

To install only the C libraries upon which the Haskell code of the node depends (e.g. because you are developing for Cardano):

brew tap notunrandom/cardano
brew install blst libsodium-cardano [email protected]

Trying out the node and CLI

After installation you should see that the cardano-node and cardano-cli commands are available from Homebrew:

which cardano-node
which cardano-cli

You can check the version with --version or display help with --help.

To actually try the node and CLI:

• first create and change into a testnet directory
• download the configuration files for the preprod network
• start the node

mkdir -p preprod/{db,conf} && cd preprod
curl --output-dir conf --remote-name-all --variable prefix=https://book.play.dev.cardano.org/environments-pre/preprod --expand-url "{{prefix}}/{config,tracer-config,db-sync-config,submit-api-config,topology,byron-genesis,shelley-genesis,alonzo-genesis,conway-genesis,peer-snapshot}.json" --expand-url "{{prefix}}/guardrails-script.plutus"
cardano-node run --topology conf/topology.json --config conf/config.json --database-path db --socket-path node.socket --port 3001

You should see the output showing that the node is syncing.

In a separate terminal, use the CLI to query the tip of your node (you may need to brew install watch before running the following command):

CARDANO_NODE_SOCKET_PATH=preprod/node.socket watch cardano-cli query tip --testnet-magic 1

See also

cardano-node --help, cardano-cli --help or check Cardano Developer Portal

How to contribute to this tap.

brew help, man brew or check Homebrew's documentation.