Getting Started

Platform availability

Prebuilt releases ship for Linux x86_64 (.tar.gz, .deb, .rpm), Windows x86_64 (.tar.gz), and macOS arm64 / Apple Silicon (.tar.gz). Intel (x86_64) Macs are not yet served by a prebuilt binary — build from source on those. The installers fail fast with a clear message on any unsupported platform/arch.

Installation

One-line install

# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/main/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/main/install.ps1 | iex

Both detect your OS/arch, download the matching release binary, and install it (/usr/local/bin or ~/.local/bin on Unix; %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\lci on Windows). Override with LCI_PREFIX; pin a version with LCI_VERSION=0.7.0.

npm

npm install -g @standardbeagle/lci
lci --version

Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform — no compiler required.

uv / pip

uv tool install lci-cli      # or: pipx install lci-cli
lci --version

Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform — no compiler required.

Release artifact

# Linux: tarball or Debian package
curl -fLO https://github.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/releases/download/v0.7.0/lci-0.7.0-Linux.tar.gz
tar -xzf lci-0.7.0-Linux.tar.gz
sudo install lci-0.7.0-Linux/bin/lci /usr/local/bin/

# or
sudo dpkg -i lci-0.7.0-Linux.deb

lci --version   # 0.7.0
lci search "myFunction"

Updating

lci update            # self-update to the latest release
lci update --check    # report current vs latest without installing
lci update --version 0.6.0   # install a specific release

lci update works regardless of how lci was installed. Package-manager users can also run npm update -g @standardbeagle/lci or uv tool upgrade lci-cli.

Building from source

Toolchain: GCC 13+ or Clang 17+, CMake 3.25+, vcpkg, Ninja.

cmake --preset release \
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$VCPKG_ROOT/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
cmake --build build/release --parallel
./build/release/src/lci --version

Install and package the build:

cd build/release
sudo cmake --install .
cpack -G TGZ    # produces lci-0.7.0-Linux.tar.gz
cpack -G DEB    # produces lci-0.7.0-Linux.deb

The CPack output contains only bin/lci (~30 MB). Tree-sitter grammars, RE2, and TLS are statically linked; the only shared runtime dependencies are libc, libstdc++, libgcc_s, and libm (all standard on modern Linux).

Running the test suite

cmake --build build/release --parallel
ctest --preset release --parallel $(nproc)

The preset excludes the separately gated benchmark target. Run ./build/release/tests/lci_benchmarks explicitly for performance checks.

Your first search

lci search "myFunction"

Full CLI reference: lci --help or lci <command> --help, or see CLI Usage.