Zig Installation

May 8, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Prefer the packaged install when possible

If you already use Homebrew on macOS or Linux, the shortest path is the prebuilt NullClaw package. It does not require a local Zig toolchain:

brew install nullclaw

Use the Debian steps below only when you want to build NullClaw from source and need the exact pinned Zig 0.16.0 toolchain.

Debian

These steps install Zig 0.16.0 from the official x86_64 Linux tarball on a fresh Debian system. Run the apt commands as root, or prefix each with sudo if you have a non-root user.

The repository CI and container builds resolve Zig downloads through .github/scripts/install-zig.sh. This page keeps the manual Debian path explicit for users setting up Zig before their first source build.

  1. Refresh the package index:

    apt update

  2. Install the download and extraction tools:

    apt install -y ca-certificates wget xz-utils

  3. Visit ziglang.org/download and copy the URL for Zig 0.16.0. On a typical Debian x86_64 box, that is the Linux x86_64 variant:

    https://ziglang.org/download/0.16.0/zig-x86_64-linux-0.16.0.tar.xz

  4. Download the tarball:

    wget https://ziglang.org/download/0.16.0/zig-x86_64-linux-0.16.0.tar.xz

  5. Verify the archive checksum from the official download metadata:

    printf '%s  %s\n' \
  70e49664a74374b48b51e6f3fdfbf437f6395d42509050588bd49abe52ba3d00 \
  zig-x86_64-linux-0.16.0.tar.xz | sha256sum -c -

  6. Extract the archive:

    tar -xf zig-x86_64-linux-0.16.0.tar.xz

  7. Add the extracted directory to your PATH:

    export PATH="$PWD/zig-x86_64-linux-0.16.0:$PATH"

    To keep Zig available in new shells, add the same export line with the absolute extracted directory path to your shell profile.

  8. Verify the exact required version:

    zig version

    The output must be 0.16.0.