Skip to main content

Installation Guide

The nimbus-cli is a command line tool to help develop and test experiments and features on an instrumented mobile app.

It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows. It works with adb to drive Android apps on Android emulators and devices, and with simctl on macOS to drive iOS apps on the simulator.

Prerequisites​

For working with Android:​

For working with iOS:​

  • Install Xcode.
  • Run xcode-select --install

Installing nimbus-cli on macOS or Linux​

Copy the following command, and paste it into a command line.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mozilla/application-services/main/install-nimbus-cli.sh | bash

This should give you output something like this:

✅ Downloading https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/api/index/v1/task/project.application-services.v2.nimbus-cli.latest/artifacts/public/build/nimbus-cli-aarch64-apple-darwin.zip
✅ Preparing nimbus-cli for install
ℹ️  Using for the first time may trigger a malicious software warning. Fix with: https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchleab3a043/mac
✅ nimbus-cli installed into /Users/jhugman/.local/bin
✅ Cleaning up installation directory
✅ Success!

Depending on your setup, it may ask for a password just after the "Preparing" step.

Checking the installation​

Run the following command:

nimbus-cli --help

This should output something that starts with:

Mozilla Nimbus' command line tool for mobile apps

Usage: nimbus-cli [OPTIONS] --app <APP> --channel <CHANNEL> <COMMAND>

macOS and the malicious software warning​

The installation script tries to mitigate this, but on first run, macOS may give you a warning:

  • Click on "Show in Finder"
  • Right click on the nimbus-cli icon
  • Select "Open"
  • Confirm that you Trust this Developer.

Installing for Windows​

  1. Download the nimbus-cli zip file for Windows.
  2. Uncompress the file.
  3. Move the file x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release/nimbus-cli.exe to a convenient location (e.g. C:\Platform-Tools).
  4. Search for system environment in the Windows Start search and select Edit the system environment variables from the results.
  5. Click Environment Variables toward the bottom of the window that opened.
  6. In the lower section of the next window, under System variables, look for the Path row. Select it and click Edit.
  7. Select the New button in the Edit environment variable window and add the path with the platform tools. In our example, that's C:\Platform-Tools.
  8. Exit all windows and save the changes you made by selecting OK.
  9. Restart the terminal, and test.

Manual install for macOS or Linux​

  1. Download the nimbus-cli zip file for Apple Silicon macOS, Intel macOS or x86_64 Linux.
  2. Uncompress the file.
  3. Move the file release/nimbus-cli to a convenient location, say $HOME/bin
  4. Add this location to your PATH, by running in a terminal:
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin' >> "~/.${SHELL}rc"
  1. Restart the terminal, and test.

Building from source​

  1. Install the rust toolchain, using rustup.
  2. Clone the application-services repo.
git clone https://github.com/mozilla/application-services.git
  1. Change into the application-services directory.
cd application-services
  1. Build the nimbus-cli using cargo:
cargo build --manifest-path components/support/nimbus-cli/Cargo.toml --

The binary will be at target/release/nimbus-cli relative to the application-services directory.

  1. Alternatively, set an alias to build and run from source:
alias nimbus-cli="cargo run --manifest-path $(pwd)/components/support/nimbus-cli/Cargo.toml --"