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Installing Rask

One command, on a machine with nothing on it:


curl -sSL https://rask.sh/rask.sh | sh

# Windows
irm https://rask.sh/rask.ps1 | iex

That installs the rask CLI and the dependencies the CLI actually shells out to, then runs rask doctor so you can see the result. Everything lands in your home directory: no sudo, no elevated prompt, no distro package manager, and nothing written outside $HOME.

Already have the .NET 10 SDK and want only the tool? dotnet tool install -g Rask.Cli is still the whole story — the script exists for the case where you don't.

What it installs

What Why If it's already there
Always .NET 10 SDK into ~/.dotnet rask is a net10.0 global tool, and every command shells out to dotnet left alone — any SDK 10 or newer satisfies it
Always Rask.Cli as a global tool the rask command itself updated instead of installed
Always dotnet-ef rask db add / update / list / drop left alone
Always wasm-tools workload every net10.0-browser build — the WASM templates, and --wasm on a server app left alone
Always Node.js LTS into ~/.local/share/rask/node rask new --template react\|vue\|svelte\|solid\|lit\|preact\|angular and the meta framework templates (nuxt\|nextjs\|sveltekit\|solidstart\|tanstack-start\|analog), and rask dev's dev server. The meta lane also needs node at runtime, not just at build time. left alone if node --version is ≥ 24.15 (the Active LTS line the scaffolders track)
Never Docker rask deploy, rask db backup --remote detected and reported only

Docker is deliberately not installed. Putting a container runtime on someone's workstation is a big, hard-to-reverse change, and only two commands need it — the script tells you the one line to run if you want it.

The .NET SDK is only installed when there isn't one. An SDK you installed with brew, apt, or the Microsoft installer is detected and used as-is; the script never touches it, and never changes which dotnet your other projects resolve.

Node is downloaded from nodejs.org and its SHA-256 is verified against the published SHASUMS256.txt before anything is unpacked.

Options


curl -sSL https://rask.sh/rask.sh | sh -s -- --prerelease

The -s -- is how you pass an option through a pipe: sh reads the script from stdin, and everything after -- becomes the script's arguments.

Option Environment equivalent Effect
--version <v> RASK_INSTALL_PACKAGE pins the package install a specific Rask.Cli version
--prerelease install the latest nightly prerelease
--no-sdk never install the .NET SDK, even when none is found
--no-ef skip dotnet-ef (rask db installs it on first use anyway)
--no-wasm-tools skip the workload — a server-only app never needs it
--no-node skip Node — only the SPA templates need it
--no-path never write to a shell profile
--dry-run print every step and change nothing
--quiet print only errors and the final summary
--help the option list

On Windows the same options are PowerShell switches (-Prerelease, -NoNode, -DryRun, …). iex cannot pass arguments, so use a script block when you need one:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://rask.sh/rask.ps1))) -Prerelease

Install locations

Every path is overridable from the environment, on both scripts:

Variable Default (Unix) Default (Windows)
RASK_INSTALL_DOTNET_ROOT $DOTNET_ROOT, else ~/.dotnet %USERPROFILE%\.dotnet
RASK_INSTALL_PREFIX ~/.local/share/rask %LOCALAPPDATA%\rask
RASK_INSTALL_DOTNET_CHANNEL 10.0 10.0
RASK_INSTALL_NODE_MIN 24.15.0 24.15.0
RASK_INSTALL_PACKAGE Rask.Cli Rask.Cli

Upgrading

Re-run the same one-liner. The script is idempotent: it updates the tool rather than failing on an existing install, rewrites its PATH block instead of appending a second copy, and leaves every dependency that is already current untouched.

dotnet tool update -g Rask.Cli still works and is faster if the tool is all you want to move.

Uninstalling


dotnet tool uninstall -g Rask.Cli
rm -rf ~/.local/share/rask          # the Node the installer unpacked, if any

Then delete the block between # >>> rask installer >>> and # <<< rask installer <<< from your shell profile. Leave ~/.dotnet alone unless you are sure nothing else uses it.

On Windows: dotnet tool uninstall -g Rask.Cli, remove %LOCALAPPDATA%\rask, and drop the two rask entries from your user Path.

Troubleshooting

rask: command not found right after installing. The script writes to a shell profile, which your current shell has already read. Open a new terminal, or run the export PATH=… line the script printed.

rask says "You must install .NET to run this application" — but dotnet works. A .NET global tool is an apphost, and an apphost does not look on PATH for a runtime: it reads DOTNET_ROOT, then the registered location, then the default install directory. With the SDK in ~/.dotnet it needs DOTNET_ROOT set, which the installer writes into your profile alongside the PATH lines. If you passed --no-path, set it yourself:


export DOTNET_ROOT="$HOME/.dotnet"

The installer only writes DOTNET_ROOT when it actually installed an SDK into ~/.dotnet — setting it on a machine whose SDK lives elsewhere would break the SDK that was working.

"installing the .NET SDK needs bash." Microsoft's dotnet-install.sh is a bash script, even though rask.sh itself is POSIX sh. Nearly every system has bash; a minimal container may not. Install it, or install the SDK yourself and re-run with --no-sdk.

Which profile does it write? ~/.zshrc for zsh, ~/.bashrc for bash on Linux, ~/.bash_profile for bash on macOS (a Terminal tab there is a login shell, which never reads .bashrc), ~/.config/fish/config.fish for fish, and ~/.profile otherwise. --no-path skips it entirely.

"could not install the wasm-tools workload." You have a machine-wide .NET SDK, so its workload directory is root-owned. Run sudo dotnet workload install wasm-tools (Windows: an Administrator terminal). The script never elevates on your behalf. Only browser-wasm builds need it — a server app builds fine without.

Behind a proxy, or offline. The script needs nuget.org, dot.net and nodejs.org. With an SDK and Node already installed, --no-sdk --no-node reduces that to nuget.org alone.

Reviewing it before running it. It is a single POSIX sh file with no dependencies, served from this repository — read it at rask.sh, or:


curl -sSL https://rask.sh/rask.sh -o rask.sh
less rask.sh
sh rask.sh --dry-run     # prints every step, changes nothing
sh rask.sh

--dry-run is exact rather than approximate: every command that would change anything on your machine goes through one wrapper, and that wrapper prints instead of running.

A note on curl | sh. Piping a download into a shell has a real hazard: a connection that drops halfway leaves sh executing half a script. rask.sh closes that structurally — every statement lives inside a function and the file's last line is the only thing that calls one, so a truncated read defines some functions and runs nothing. A test asserts that property on the file itself, and the same reasoning is why the script downloads Microsoft's dotnet-install.sh to a file before running it rather than piping it onward.

Without the script

Nothing here is magic, and the manual path stays supported:


# 1. the .NET 10 SDK — https://dot.net
# 2. the tool
dotnet tool install -g Rask.Cli
# 3. what your project needs
dotnet tool install -g dotnet-ef       # rask db
dotnet workload install wasm-tools     # browser-wasm builds
# 4. Node 24 LTS — https://nodejs.org   (SPA templates only)

rask doctor reports what it finds either way.

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