Installation

Installing Nucleus means installing one binary: the nucleus CLI. This page covers the requirements, the install command, and the two optional database drivers that need a build tag.

Requirements

• Go 1.26 or newer (matches the go directive in go.mod)
• One of: SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL
• Optional: Redis, for the Redis session store and the background-task runtime

Budget time for the first build. The framework's dependency graph is large (~350 modules, on the order of 3 GB of module cache), so a cold go build takes minutes. Warm builds are seconds.

Install the CLI

go install github.com/jcsvwinston/nucleus/cmd/nucleus@latest

This places the nucleus binary in $GOBIN (or $GOPATH/bin). Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

Verify the install:

nucleus --version
nucleus doctor

nucleus doctor runs a self-check of the local environment: Go version, required system tools, optional dependencies, and a write-test against the working directory.

What gets installed

The nucleus binary is the only artifact. There is no daemon, no agent, no global configuration file. Each project ships its own nucleus.yml and reads it from the project root by default.

Build-tagged enterprise drivers

SQLite, PostgreSQL and MySQL are included by default. MSSQL and Oracle are opt-in via Go build tags, which keeps the default binary small and free of extra CGO requirements:

go install -tags mssql  github.com/jcsvwinston/nucleus/cmd/nucleus@latest
go install -tags oracle github.com/jcsvwinston/nucleus/cmd/nucleus@latest

See pkg/db for the full driver list.

Updating

Re-running go install …@latest overwrites the binary in place.

The CLI follows semantic versioning. On the stable v1.x line, minor and patch upgrades never remove a frozen surface — removals need a new major version and a deprecation record first. The CHANGELOG lists what each release adds.