Installation of JHipster

OK, now let's get started for real. JHipster can be used from a local installation with NPM or Yarn, from a Vagrant image provided by the team, or using a Docker image. Alternatively, there is also the JHipster online application we saw earlier.

Among all the options, the best way to utilize the full power of JHipster would be by installing the JHipster CLI using Yarn or NPM. Open a Terminal and run:

> yarn add global generator-jhipster

If you would prefer NPM, then just run:

> npm install -g generator-jhipster

Wait for the installation to finish and in the Terminal run jhipster --version. You should see the version info as shown here:

 

That's it; we are ready to roll. 

If you are someone who cannot wait for new versions to arrive, you can always use the current development code by following these steps after installing the JHipster CLI following the preceding steps:
  1. In a Terminal, navigate to a directory you would like to use. For example, if you have a folder called project in your home directory, run cd ~/projects/ and for Windows run cd c:\Users\<username>\Desktop\projects
  2. Run, git clone https://github.com/jhipster/generator-jhipster.git
  3. Now, navigate to the folder by running cd generator-jhipster
  4. Run npm link to create a symbolic link from this folder into the globally installed application in global node_modules
  5. Now when you run the JHipster commands you will be using the version you cloned instead of the version you installed
Please note that you should be doing this only if you are absolutely sure of what you are doing. Also please note that development versions of the software will always be unstable and might contain bugs.

If you prefer to isolate the installation in a virtual environment, then you can use the Vagrant development box or the Docker image from the JHipster team. Visit https://github.com/jhipster/jhipster-devbox for instructions to use the Vagrant box or visit http://www.jhipster.tech/installation and scroll down to the Docker installation (for advanced users only) section for instructions to use a Docker image.