Getting Started

Try Wasp Without Installing 🤔?

Give Wasp a spin in the browser without any setup by running our Wasp Template for Gitpod

1. Requirements

You must have node (and npm) installed on your machine and available in PATH. We rely on the latest Node.js LTS version (currently v18.14.2).

You can check the node version by running:

$ node -v
v18.14.2

We recommend using nvm for managing your Node.js installation version(s).

Quick guide on installing/using nvm

Install nvm via your OS package manager (aptitude, pacman, homebrew, ...) or alternatively via nvm install script.

Then, install a version of node that you need, e.g.:

nvm install 18

Finally, whenever you need to ensure a specific version of node is used, run e.g.

nvm use 18

to set the node version for the current shell session.

You can run

node -v

to check the version of node currently being used in this shell session.

Check NVM repo for more details: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm .

Why this version of node?

At Wasp, we focus on supporting the latest LTS ("long-term-support") Node.js version, since it guarantees stability and active maintenance, which is why the official Node.js team recommends it for usage in production. Therefore, a specific Wasp release will usually require the version of Node.js that was LTS at that point of time. Check out https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/ for more details about Node.js releases.

2. Installation

Linux / OS X

Open your terminal and run:

curl -sSL https://get.wasp-lang.dev/installer.sh | sh

Windows

With Wasp for Windows, we are almost there: Wasp is successfully compiling and running on Windows but there is a bug or two stopping it from fully working. Check it out here if you are interested in helping.

In the meantime, the best way to start using Wasp on Windows is by using WSL. Once you set up Ubuntu on WSL, just follow Linux instructions for installing Wasp. If you need further help, reach out to us on Discord - we have some community members using WSL that might be able to help you.

caution

If you are using WSL2, make sure that your Wasp project is not on Windows file system, but instead on Linux file system. Otherwise, Wasp won't be able to detect file changes, due to the issue in WSL2.

From source

If the installer is not working for you or your OS is not supported, you can try building Wasp from source.

To install from source, you need to clone the wasp repo, install cabal on your machine and then run cabal install from the waspc/ dir.

If you have never built Wasp before, this might take some time due to cabal downloading dependencies for the first time.

Check waspc/ for more details on building.

3. Creating and running your first app

wasp new MyNewApp # Creates a new web app named MyNewApp.
cd MyNewApp
wasp start # Serves the web app.

That's it 🎉! You have successfully created and served a new web app at http://localhost:3000 and Wasp is serving both frontend and backend for you.

For Visual Studio Code

If you are using VSCode, install our Wasp language extension.

The extension brings the following functionality:

• Syntax highlighting for .wasp files
• Snippets for .wasp files
• Wasp language server
• live reporting of compilation errors
• autocompletion

4. What next?

Check out the 🤓 Todo App tutorial 🤓 , which will take you through all the core features of Wasp!

Also, we would be excited to have you join our community on Discord! Any feedback or questions you have, we are there for you.

Finally, to stay up to date with updates in Wasp, you can subscribe to our newsletter: https://wasp-lang.dev/#signup . We usually send 1 per month, and Matija does his best to unleash his creativity to make them engaging and fun to read :D!