setup

Installing GaleWind

GaleWind installs itself as an ordinary npm global package, so there's no separate installer or binary download — if you already have Node and npm, you already have everything you need.

Requirements

Node.js	18.0.0 or newer
npm	Bundled with Node — used once, to install gwin itself
OS	macOS, Linux, or Windows
License	MIT

Installing

Install galewind-npm globally with npm. This is the only step that uses npm directly — from here on, gwin handles its own installs and updates.

# install gwin globally
npm install -g galewind-npm

This gives you two commands: gwin, the main tool, and gwix, a small helper for running a workspace package's CLI without adding it to your PATH (see Workspaces in the docs). Global installs land in ~/.galewind/global.

Verifying your install

Confirm gwin is on your PATH and see which version you're on:

gwin -v
# or
gwin --version

This checks npm for the latest release too, and — if you're behind — prints the exact update command to run. If you're already current, it just confirms that.

PATH setup

The first time gwin installs, updates, or promotes something globally, it adds ~/.galewind/global/bin to your PATH automatically — no manual setup needed on macOS or Linux.

macOS / Linux

gwin appends a line to whichever shell profile matches your shell — .zshrc, .bashrc, or .profile. Restart your shell (or source the file it mentions) for the change to take effect.

Windows

There's no shell profile to edit, so gwin instead writes setup instructions to ~/.galewind/PATH_SETUP.txt. Open that file and follow the steps it lists.

Updating

gwin checks quietly in the background every time you run gwin i — staying silent if you're current, and printing the update command if a newer version is out:

# update gwin itself
gwin i -g galewind-npm

See the Versions page for what's changed release to release.

Using a different registry

Point gwin at a private or company registry with an environment variable — useful if registry.npmjs.org isn't where your packages live:

export GWIN_REGISTRY=https://npm.your-company.com

Uninstalling

Remove the global package the same way you'd remove any other:

npm uninstall -g galewind-npm

This leaves ~/.galewind (your global installs, shared cache, workspace registrations, and login) in place in case you reinstall later. Delete that folder too if you want a completely clean slate.