Installing Bash locally

Learn how to install Bash locally to solve Exercism's exercises on your own machine

Linux

Bash, as the GNU shell, will be found on any GNU/Linux system. BSD and other UNIX derivatives will likely require installation by the user. If you are on BSD, AIX, or a Linux that doesn't come with bash please consult your operating system's resources regarding installation of non-core packages.

In the graphical interface of your choice, look for an application named "Terminal": it might be found under an "Administrative/System Tools" section.

To verify the version of Bash available, from the command line or terminal, run:

echo $BASH_VERSION

If your shell is bash it should show something like:

4.4.19(1)-release

You shouldn't need to do anything else, bash should be installed and in your path at this point, as it is your current shell.

If your shell isn't bash, there is no reason to change it. You can write and run bash scripts without being in a bash shell.

To verify the version of bash installed, run:

bash --version

It will show something like this:

GNU bash, version 4.4.19(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

If it does not, you may not have bash installed. You should install it using your distribution's package manager.

Windows

For Windows 10, you can install WSL. This installs a full (well, the non-GUI components) Linux distribution that runs natively in Windows.

Alternatively, you can install:

MacOS

For Apple OSX:

  • open Finder,
  • open your Applications folder,
  • open the Utilities folder,
  • finally open the Terminal application.

Note that the bash version installed on MacOS is very old, version 3.2. This is due to (i) newer bash versions being licensed under the GPLv3 and (ii) Apple not wanting to be forced to comply with the terms of that license. Additionally, Apple has signaled that bash will be going away from MacOS: the default login shell was recently changed from bash to zsh.

To obtain an up-to-date bash on your Mac:

  1. install Homebrew
  2. in a Terminal, enter: brew install bash

This installs an up-to-date bash as (I believe) /usr/local/bin/bash (so that the system's default bash is not overwritten -- other tools may rely on /bin/bash).

If you want the homebrew bash to be launched when you type bash, then edit your ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.profile) file to put /usr/local/bin earlier than /bin in the PATH:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH