Get FlatRoot
This guide walks through installing the latest FlatRoot binary on Linux. FlatRoot ships as a single self-contained executable for each supported host architecture: x86_64, aarch64, armv7l, i686, and riscv64. Nothing else is needed on the host — no package manager, no runtime libraries, no setup.
Download a release binary
Fetch the latest release for your host architecture:
curl -Lo flatroot https://github.com/flatroot/flatroot/releases/latest/download/flatroot-linux-$(uname -m)
chmod +x flatroot
$(uname -m) expands to one of the architectures listed above. If your host reports something else, there is no pre-built binary for it today.
Install to PATH
To invoke flatroot from anywhere, move it into a directory on your $PATH.
Per-user (no root required):
Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your $PATH — most modern distributions include it by default; check with echo $PATH.
System-wide:
After either, flatroot --version should work from any directory.
Verify the binary
Sanity-check the install:
You should see a version string. If the command is not found, re-check that the binary is executable (chmod +x) and — for the PATH install — that the target directory is actually on your $PATH.
Related pages
- How-To Guides / Install Packages — This guide shows how to install one or more Linux packages into a local directory, producing a self-contained filesystem tree called a rootfs. FlatRoot fetches each package...
how-to install dependencies - How-To Guides / Multiple Architectures — This guide shows how to install packages for more than one CPU architecture into the same rootfs. Some applications need that: Wine and Steam pull 32-bit libraries alongside...
how-to install multiarch - How-To Guides / Pin a build to a snapshot date — This guide shows how to pin a FlatRoot install to a specific point in time, so repeated runs produce the same rootfs regardless of when or where the command is executed....
how-to install pinning reproducibility