Prerequisites
You must have a working installation of Docker.
Most Docker documentation will push you to install "Docker Desktop" on your Linux machine. This is completely unnecessary in our opinion. Instead of "Docker Desktop", we suggest installing the "Docker Engine" instead.
Install Docker Engine
Install "Docker Engine" following the official installation instructions:
Configure Docker permissions
Using the post-installation instructions defined by Docker, be sure to add your current user to the docker group if you want to be able to run Docker without root privileges.
Create the `docker` group
sudo groupadd docker
Add your current user to the `docker` group.
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
Activate the changes to groups.
newgrp docker
Ensure Docker is working
To test you have a working version of Docker, you can run their "hello world" container. docker version.
Run a "hello world" container to ensure Docker works correctly
docker run hello-world
Check your Docker Compose Version
Spin is set to run the latest version of Docker Compose (Version 2).
Check your Docker Compose version
docker compose version
If you do not see version 2.x installed, you'll need to update. How to Install Docker Compose V2 →
Download and install spin
Run the installer with this simple command in your terminal
Install Spin (no root permissions required)
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/serversideup/spin/main/tools/install.sh)"
The above script will install spin at the user level in ~/.spin, using less than 300KB of storage.
Spin will prompt you if you want Spin to modify your PATH variable. If you press "Yes" follow the instructions on the screen. If you press "No" you will need to manually add Spin to your PATH.
Configuring your PATH variable manually
If you did not add spin to your PATH during the installation, you can manually add it to your PATH by adding this to your shell profile:
Run echo $0 in your terminal to figure out which shell you are using.
Add spin to your path
# Add this to `~/.zshrc` or `~/.bash_profile`
export PATH="$HOME/.spin/bin:$PATH"
In order to apply the changes to your current terminal session, you will need to run the source command.
Use the "source" command to apply your profile changes immediately
# If you're using ZSH
source ~/.zshrc
# If you're using Bash
source ~/.bash_profile
Validate it's working
You should be able to run this and get a result 🥳
Confirm spin is working correctly by getting the version
spin version