Installation

Necessary prerequisites for running act

act depends on docker (exactly Docker Engine API) to run workflows in containers. As long you don't require container isolation, you can run selected (e.g. windows or macOS) jobs directly on your System see Runners. In the latter case you don't need to have docker installed or running.

If you are using macOS, please be sure to follow the steps outlined in Docker Docs for how to install Docker Desktop for Mac.

If you are using Windows, please follow steps for installing Docker Desktop on Windows.

If you are using Linux, you will need to install Docker Engine.

To use act with remote Docker Engine API compatible host, see Custom container engine act is currently not supported with podman or other container backends (it might work, but it's not guaranteed). Please see #303 for updates.

Pre-built artifacts

Bash script

You can easily install a pre-built act executable on any system with bash via below commandline

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nektos/act/master/install.sh | sudo bash

⚠ Script can't install non-released versions ⚠

Manual download of prebuilt executable

Prebuilt executables for multiple platforms are available via latest release page. You can unpack and run them in terminal specifying full path or add them to one of the paths included in PATH environment variable.

Build from source

Requires Go toolchain 1.18+

git clone https://github.com/nektos/act.git
cd act/
make build
# OR
go build -ldflags "-X main.version=$(git describe --tags --dirty --always | sed -e 's/^v//')" -o dist/local/act main.go

Installation via software package manager

act is available in below package repositories

Packaging status

Packaging status