[Feature]: non-npm install

[y-nk]

What area(s) will this request affect?

Other

What type of change do you want to see?

New feature

Overview

i'd like to have the shopify cli as a standalone binary rather than a npm package.

Motivation

When using node runtime manager, npm version + binary changes and the global store changes too, so it can get unlinked.

[isaacroldan]

Hi @y-nk, can you provide more details on what friction are you facing by using npm install? what do you mean it can get unlinked?.

We don't plan to release the CLI as a standalone binary, npm distribution provides features that would be impossible to have with a standalone binary distribution.

[y-nk]

i actually found there's a brew package, but it's not documented on the doc website.

➜ brew info shopify-cli
==> shopify/shopify/shopify-cli: stable 3.82.0
A CLI tool to build for the Shopify platform
https://github.com/shopify/cli#readme
Installed
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/shopify-cli/3.82.0 (733 files, 138.4MB) *
  Built from source on 2025-07-14 at 10:53:04
From: https://github.com/shopify/homebrew-shopify/blob/HEAD/shopify-cli.rb
License: MIT

[y-nk]

@isaacroldan when using a runtime version manager (nvm, fnm, asdf, mise, etc...) the symlink to npm matches the currently used version of node/npm. so if you did npm --version you'd get (for example) 10.9.2 and a npm i -g would install to the global node_modules/ location for that specific npm binary (10.9.2) ; changing directory could activate the runtime version manager to swap to the desired node/npm version, unlinking the 10.9.2 npm and all the globally installed binaries with it leading to missing binary.

that is inherent to using a runtime version manager, but it's also why suggesting people to install through npm is not a good idea (generally speaking). for a more recent parallel issue with another fancy cli tool, see that claude-code issue.

[isaacroldan]

Hi @y-nk, homebrew installation is actually documented here: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/shopify-cli#installation

I see what you mean, but for now the only alternative to npm is homebrew (which uses npm under the hood, but doesn't have the same issues you mention).

Thanks for the feedback and glad that the homebrew alternative works for you!