Installation

SKM is distributed as a single, compiled, dependency-free binary. It can be installed on multiple platforms including macOS, Linux, BSD, and Windows. Choose the method that best aligns with your system and package management preferences.

Prerequisites

  • Operating System: macOS, Linux (various architectures), Windows, or BSD variants.
  • OpenSSH: SKM relies on standard underlying OS binaries like ssh-keygen, ssh-add, and ssh-copy-id. These must be installed and available in your system's PATH. (They are included by default on macOS and most Linux distributions).

Method 1: Using Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

If you use Homebrew, installing via the custom tap is the recommended approach. This ensures you can easily update SKM in the future using brew upgrade.

# Tap the author's repository
brew tap timothyye/tap

# Install the SKM package
brew install timothyye/tap/skm

Method 2: Using Go (For Developers)

If you have a Go development environment configured (Go 1.17+ recommended), you can compile and install SKM directly from the source repository. This is ideal if you want the absolute latest commits or are running an uncommon CPU architecture.

# For Go 1.17 and above
go install github.com/TimothyYe/skm/cmd/skm@latest

Note: Ensure your $(go env GOPATH)/bin directory is included in your system's $PATH so your shell can locate the compiled skm command.

Method 3: Manual Installation (Pre-compiled Binaries)

Pre-compiled binaries are generated automatically via GitHub Actions for every release. This is the best method for servers or environments without a package manager.

  1. Navigate to the SKM GitHub Releases page.
  2. Download the compressed archive matching your Operating System and Architecture (e.g., skm-linux64-x.x.x.tar.gz for most Linux servers, or skm-mac64-... for Intel Macs).
  3. Extract the archive.
  4. Move the binary into your PATH.

Example for Linux (AMD64): 

# Extract the downloaded archive
tar -xzvf skm-linux64-v0.8.5.tar.gz

# Move the binary to a global bin directory
sudo mv skm /usr/local/bin/skm

# Ensure it is executable
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/skm

Setting up Bash Autocompletion

SKM provides a bash autocomplete script. This vastly improves the user experience by allowing you to press TAB to auto-complete SKM subcommands (like init, use, create) as well as your custom key alias names.

To enable bash autocompletion:

  1. Locate the completions/skm.bash file from the source repository.
  2. Download or copy it to a persistent location on your machine (e.g., ~/.skm_autocomplete.bash).
  3. Source this file in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile.
# Add this line to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc
source ~/.skm_autocomplete.bash

Reload your shell (source ~/.bashrc) and type skm use <TAB> to test it.

Verifying the Installation

Once installed, verify that the OS can locate the SKM binary and that the version matches what you expect:

skm --version

If the command returns the version number and the SKM ASCII logo, you are ready to proceed to the Quick Start guide.

Troubleshooting Installation

  • skm: command not found: The binary is not in your system's PATH. If installed via Go, check your GOPATH. If installed manually, ensure /usr/local/bin (or wherever you placed it) is in your shell's path configuration.
  • Permission Denied: If running the manual binary yields a permission error, ensure you have set the executable flag using chmod +x skm.