Tier: Beginner

This page covers the five ways to install qsv. For the absolute fastest path, download a prebuilt binary (Option 1). For a graphical alternative, see qsv pro.

Prefer a graphical interface? qsv pro is the GUI companion to qsv: drop a spreadsheet and explore it interactively. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. See qsv pro Spotlight for what it adds over the CLI.

Full-featured prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows ship with every release. They include all features except Python (use qsvpy* variants for Python).

As of 21.1.0, prebuilt binaries on native targets are Profile-Guided-Optimization (PGO) tuned for extra performance out of the box — no action required. (The 24.0.0 Apple Silicon build was the exception, shipped without PGO; it is restored in Unreleased (after 24.0.0).) See Performance Tuning → PGO-optimized prebuilt binaries.

As of 22.0.1, the prebuilt binaries also include the new viz command (with static PNG/SVG/PDF export), across the little-endian targets — including the portable and qsvpy* builds, which previously shipped a narrower feature set than their release notes implied. See Binary Variants.

Download from the latest release, or browse by platform at qsv.dathere.com/download.

macOS — binaries are signed with an ad-hoc signature. The first time you run qsv, macOS may quarantine it. Remove the quarantine attribute:

# Replace qsv with qsvmcp, qsvlite, or qsvdp if installing those variants
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine qsv

Alternatively, use Gatekeeper settings to allow the binary.

Windows — A one-click MSI Easy Installer is available. Download the qsv-easy-installer_*.msi and run it, then click Install qsv inside the installer. It downloads the latest qsv and adds it to your PATH.

Windows on ARM — besides aarch64-pc-windows-msvc, 24.0.0 adds aarch64-pc-windows-gnullvm, which links libunwind/libc++ statically and needs only Windows system DLLs.

Linux — pick the variant matching your libc:

• linux-x86_64-gnu — most distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch)
• linux-x86_64-musl — Alpine, Void Linux, statically-linked deployments. Note that the luau feature is not available in musl builds (see Troubleshooting)
• linux-aarch64-gnu — ARM64 Linux (Raspberry Pi 4/5, AWS Graviton, Apple Silicon under Linux)
• linux-aarch64-musl — ARM64 Alpine / static deployments (new in 24.0.0; reduced feature set like x86_64 musl, and no qsvdp/qsvmcp)
• linux-powerpc64le-gnu — IBM Power servers (CPU optimizations enabled)

cargo install qsv --locked --features all_features

Apple Silicon, Windows-on-ARM, IBM Power, and IBM Z mainframe builds always have CPU optimizations enabled (no SIGILL risk).

All prebuilt zip archives are signed with zipsign:

# Install zipsign (once)
cargo install zipsign

# Download the qsv-zipsign-public.key from
#   https://github.com/dathere/qsv/raw/master/src/qsv-zipsign-public.key
# Then verify
zipsign verify zip qsv-<version>-<target>.zip qsv-zipsign-public.key

Prebuilt binaries include the self_update feature, so you can update in place:

qsv --update

self_update fetches only from the official releases page and verifies the zipsign signature automatically.

Running bare qsv with no command also does a background check for a newer release. That check is throttled to twice a month — a timestamp in the qsv cache directory (QSV_CACHE_DIR, else ~/.qsv-cache) records the last check, so day-to-day use doesn't hit the network. Set QSV_NO_UPDATE=1 to opt out entirely; the opt-out is honored before the cache directory is even touched.

# Arch Linux (Extra)
pacman -S qsv

# Homebrew (macOS / Linux)
brew install qsv

# MacPorts (macOS)
sudo port install qsv

# Mise (Linux / macOS / Windows)
mise use -g qsv@latest

# Nixpkgs (Linux / macOS)
nix-shell -p qsv

# Scoop (Windows)
scoop install qsv

# Void Linux
sudo xbps-install qsv

# Conda-forge
conda install conda-forge::qsv

Heads up: these distributions are maintained by volunteers and enable different feature sets. For example, Homebrew enables apply, fetch, foreach, geocode, lens, luau, and to but not all of them. Run qsv --version to see which features are enabled in your install.

datHere maintains a Debian package for the latest Ubuntu LTS (x86_64):

wget -O - https://dathere.github.io/qsv-deb-releases/qsv-deb.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/qsv-deb.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/qsv-deb.gpg] https://dathere.github.io/qsv-deb-releases ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qsv.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install qsv

If you have Rust installed:

cargo install qsv --locked --features all_features

This builds from crates.io. It's slower than downloading the prebuilt binary and lacks self_update, but it produces a binary matching your exact CPU.

git clone https://github.com/dathere/qsv.git
cd qsv

# Full-featured
cargo build --release --locked --bin qsv -F all_features

# All CPU optimizations for your CPU (non-portable binary)
CARGO_BUILD_RUSTFLAGS='-C target-cpu=native' \
  cargo build --release --locked --bin qsv -F all_features

# Only the features you need (smaller binary)
cargo build --release --locked --bin qsv -F feature_capable,fetch,foreach

Other variants:

cargo build --release --locked --bin qsvmcp -F qsvmcp        # MCP server
cargo build --release --locked --bin qsvlite -F lite         # ~16% size, xsv-compatible
cargo build --release --locked --bin qsvdp   -F datapusher_plus

The compiled binary lands in ./target/release/. See Binary Variants for when to pick each variant, and Performance Tuning for nightly builds.

You'll need a C linker:

• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install build-essential
• macOS: xcode-select --install
• Windows: Visual Studio 2022 with the "Desktop Development with C++" workload, the Windows SDK, and the English language pack

The feature_capable, qsvmcp, lite, and datapusher_plus features are mutually exclusive — see docs/FEATURES.md for the full feature flag matrix.

qsv supports completion in bash, zsh, powershell, fish, nushell, fig, and elvish. Download the script for your shell from qsv.dathere.com/download or follow the step-by-step tutorial at 100.dathere.com.

To customize completions, see contrib/completions/README.md.

qsv --version
qsv --list      # shows all available commands

You're ready! Next:

• Getting Started — first commands against a real 2.7M-row dataset
• Binary Variants — qsv vs qsvlite vs qsvdp vs qsvmcp
• Troubleshooting — Gatekeeper, SIGILL, UTF-8, and other gotchas

• README installation section — source of truth
• docs/FEATURES.md — feature flag matrix
• Binary Variants
• Troubleshooting
• qsv pro Spotlight