To deploy a free CockroachDB Cloud cluster instead of running CockroachDB yourself, see the Quickstart.
See Release Notes for what's new in the latest release, v23.2.9. To upgrade to this release from an older version, see Cluster Upgrade.
On macOS ARM systems, spatial features are disabled due to an issue with macOS code signing for the GEOS libraries. Users needing spatial features on an ARM Mac may instead use Rosetta to run the Intel binary or use the Docker image distribution. Refer to GitHub tracking issue for more information.
Use one of the options below to install CockroachDB.
Use Homebrew
For CockroachDB v22.2.x and above, Homebrew installs binaries for your system architecture, either Intel or ARM (Apple Silicon).
For previous releases, Homebrew installs Intel binaries. Intel binaries can run on ARM systems, but with a significant reduction in performance. CockroachDB on ARM for macOS is experimental and is not yet qualified for production use and not eligible for support or uptime SLA commitments.
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Instruct Homebrew to install CockroachDB:
$ brew install cockroachdb/tap/cockroach
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Keep up-to-date with CockroachDB releases and best practices:
cockroach
process on the node. When upgrading to a new major version, you must complete additional steps to finalize the upgrade. If you need to upgrade through multiple major versions, you must complete each major-version upgrade separately, including finalizing the upgrade, before beginning the next one.
Before starting the upgrade, review the release notes, including temporary limitations during the upgrade.
To upgrade CockroachDB via HomeBrew:
brew update
brew update
brew upgrade cockroach
Download the binary
For CockroachDB v22.2.x and above, download the binaries for your system architecture, either Intel or ARM (Apple Silicon).
For previous releases, download Intel binaries. Intel binaries can run on ARM systems, but with a significant reduction in performance. CockroachDB on ARM for macOS is experimental and is not yet qualified for production use and not eligible for support or uptime SLA commitments.
-
Visit Releases to download the CockroachDB archive for the architecture of your macOS host. The archive contains the
cockroach
binary and the supporting libraries that are used to provide spatial features.You can download the binary using a web browser or you can copy the link and use a utility like
curl
to download it. If you download the ARM binary using a web browser and you plan to use CockroachDB's spatial features, an additional step is required before you can install the library, as outlined in the next step.Extract the archive and optionally copy the
cockroach
binary into yourPATH
so you can execute cockroach commands from any shell. If you get a permission error, usesudo
.Note:If you plan to use CockroachDB's spatial features, you must complete all of the following steps. Otherwise, your installation is now complete.
-
CockroachDB uses custom-built versions of the GEOS libraries. To install those libraries:
Note that spatial features are currently disabled for Mac ARM users, for whom these steps do not apply. For an upcoming patch release where this functionality is reenabled, if you downloaded the CockroachDB ARM binary archive using a web browser, macOS flags the GEOS libraries in the extracted archive as quarantined. This flag must be removed before CockroachDB can use the libraries. To remove the quarantine flag from the libraries:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine lib/libgeos*
This step is not required for Intel systems.
- Copy these libraries to one of the locations where CockroachDB expects to find them. By default, CockroachDB looks for external libraries in
/usr/local/lib/cockroach
or alib
subdirectory of the CockroachDB binary's current directory. If you place these libraries in another location, you must pass the location in the--spatial-libs
flag tocockroach start
. The instructions below assume the/usr/local/lib/cockroach
location.Create the directory where the external libraries will be stored:
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/cockroach
Copy the library files to the directory:
cp -i cockroach-v23.2.9.darwin-10.9-amd64/lib/libgeos.dylib /usr/local/lib/cockroach/
cp -i cockroach-v23.2.9.darwin-10.9-amd64/lib/libgeos_c.dylib /usr/local/lib/cockroach/
If you get a permissions error, prefix the command with
sudo
.
Verify that CockroachDB can execute spatial queries.
Make sure the
cockroach
binary you just installed is the one that runs when you typecockroach
in your shell:which cockroach
/usr/local/bin/cockroach
Start a temporary, in-memory cluster using
cockroach demo
:cockroach demo
In the demo cluster's interactive SQL shell, run the following command to test that the spatial libraries have loaded properly:
> SELECT ST_IsValid(ST_MakePoint(1,2));
You should see the following output:
st_isvalid -------------- true (1 row)
If your
cockroach
binary is not properly accessing the dynamically linked C libraries in/usr/local/lib/cockroach
, it will output an error message like the one below.ERROR: st_isvalid(): geos: error during GEOS init: geos: cannot load GEOS from dir "/usr/local/lib/cockroach": failed to execute dlopen Failed running "sql"
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Keep up-to-date with CockroachDB releases and best practices:
Use Kubernetes
To orchestrate CockroachDB locally using Kubernetes, either with configuration files or the Helm package manager, see Orchestrate CockroachDB Locally with Minikube.
Use Docker
For CockroachDB v22.2.beta-5 and above, Docker images are multi-platform images that contain binaries for both Intel and ARM (Apple Silicon). Multi-platform images do not take up additional space on your Docker host.
Docker images for previous releases contain Intel binaries only. Intel binaries can run on ARM systems, but with a significant reduction in performance.
CockroachDB on ARM for macOS is experimental and is not yet qualified for production use and not eligible for support or uptime SLA commitments.
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Install Docker for Mac. Please carefully check that you meet all prerequisites.
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Confirm that the Docker daemon is running in the background:
$ docker version
If you do not see the server listed, start the Docker daemon.
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Pull the image for the v23.2.9 release of CockroachDB from Docker Hub:
$ docker pull cockroachdb/cockroach:v23.2.9
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Keep up-to-date with CockroachDB releases and best practices:
Build from source
See the public wiki for guidance. When building on the ARM architecture, refer to Limitations.
Limitations
CockroachDB runtimes built for the ARM architecture have the following limitations:
- CockroachDB on ARM for macOS is experimental and is not yet qualified for production use and not eligible for support or uptime SLA commitments.
- Clusters with a mix of Intel and ARM nodes are untested. Cockroach Labs recommends that all cluster nodes have identical CockroachDB versions, hardware, and software.
- Floating point operations may yield different results on ARM than on Intel, particularly Fused Multiply Add (FMA) intrinsics.
- When building from source on ARM, consider disabling FMA intrinsics in your compiler. For GCC, refer to Options That Control Optimization in the GCC documentation.
What's next?
- If you're just getting started with CockroachDB:
- Start a cluster locally and talk to it via the built-in SQL client
- Learn more about CockroachDB SQL
- Build a simple application with CockroachDB using PostgreSQL-compatible client drivers and ORMs
- Explore core CockroachDB features like automatic replication, rebalancing, and fault tolerance
- If you're ready to run CockroachDB in production: