Installation

Several options for installing zq and/or zed are available:

• HomeBrew for Mac or Linux,
• Binary Download, or
• Build from Source.

To install the Zed Python client, see the Python library documentation.

Homebrew

On macOS and Linux, you can use Homebrew to install zq:

brew install brimdata/tap/zq

Similarly, to install zed for working with Zed lakes:

brew install brimdata/tap/zed

Once installed, run a quick test.

Binary Download

We offer pre-built binaries for macOS, Windows and Linux for both x86 and arm architectures in the Zed Github Release page.

Each archive includes the build for zq and zed.

Once installed, run a quick test.

Building from source

If you have Go installed, you can easily build zed from source:

go install github.com/brimdata/zed/cmd/{zed,zq}@latest

This installs the zed and zq binaries in your $GOPATH/bin.

If you don't have Go installed, download and install it from the Go install page. Go 1.21 or later is required.

Once installed, run a quick test.

Quick Tests

zq and zed are easy to test as they are completely self-contained command-line tools and require no external dependendies to run.

Test zq

To test zq, simply run this command in your shell:

echo '"hello, world"' | zq -z -

which should produce

"hello, world"

Test zed

To test zed, we'll make a lake in ./scratch, load data, and query it as follows:

export ZED_LAKE=./scratch
zed init
zed create Demo
echo '{s:"hello, world"}' | zed load -use Demo -
zed query "from Demo"

which should display

{s:"hello, world"}

Alternatively, you can run a Zed lake service, load it with data using zed load, and hit the API.

In one shell, run the server:

zed init -lake scratch
zed serve -lake scratch

And in another shell, run the client:

zed create Demo
zed use Demo
echo '{s:"hello, world"}' | zed load -
zed query "from Demo"

which should also display

{s:"hello, world"}