Installation

Prerequisites

macOS

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) — primary supported platform
• Rust toolchain 1.80+ (only for building from source)
• No additional dependencies — sandbox-exec is built-in

Linux

• Rust toolchain 1.80+ (only for building from source)
• bubblewrap (bwrap) — required for sandbox isolation

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install bubblewrap

# Fedora
sudo dnf install bubblewrap

# Arch
sudo pacman -S bubblewrap

Why bubblewrap? Zen uses Linux namespaces for sandbox isolation. Bubblewrap provides unprivileged sandboxing without requiring root access.

Homebrew (macOS & Linux, Recommended)

brew install savechina/tap/zenspace

Note: On Linux, Homebrew (Linuxbrew) also handles bubblewrap dependency automatically.

From Source

git clone https://github.com/savechina/zenspace.git
cd zenspace
bin/build
./target/release/zen --help

Binary Download

Download pre-built binaries from GitHub Releases:

macOS:

• zen-{version}-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz (Apple Silicon)
• zen-{version}-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz (Intel)

Linux:

• zen-{version}-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz (x86_64)
• zen-{version}-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz (ARM64)

Linux Note: After downloading, install bubblewrap:

sudo apt install bubblewrap  # Ubuntu/Debian

Post-Installation

Verify the installation:

zen version

Initialize your workspace:

zen workspace init

This creates the ~/.zen/ directory structure and default configuration.

Next: Quick Start