Installing Micro

The readme provides quick instructions for installing micro either by downloading the binaries (if you don't have Go installed on you system), or by using go get to build micro from source.

This page will contain some explanation for installation with package managers, and also how the makefile that comes with micro works.

Package Managers

Homebrew

If you are on OSX, you can install micro using Homebrew:

brew tap zyedidia/micro
brew install --devel micro

Arch Linux

If you are on Arch Linux, you can install micro using the AUR:

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/micro-git.tar.gz
cd micro-git
makepkg -si

CRUX

If you are on CRUX, you can install micro using the 6c37-git repo:

git clone https://github.com/6c37/crux-ports-git
cd crux-ports-git/micro
# make sure you have go installed!
pkgmk -i

Makefile

The Makefile (which can be viewed here) tries to be as simple as possible.

Here is an overview of the Makefile and what each command does:

make deps makes sure that all of micro's dependencies are installed.

make runtime downloads and installs github.com/jteeuwen/go-bindata/ and then uses that to create the runtime.go file from the runtime/ directory. This file is used so that the runtime/ directory (containing micro's default runtime files such as colorschemes and plugins) is embedded inside the micro binary.

make tcell simply pulls from the tcell package that should be installed to make sure the version of tcell being used is up-to-date.

make build runs make deps and make tcell and then builds micro and links in the correct version (the current commit hash) and places the binary in the current directory.

make install runs make build and then places the binary in $GOPATH/bin.