Skip to main content
Cerulion is in closed alpha — curated early access for teams building high-performance robotics. This page shows how to get access and, once you have it, get the cerulion CLI building and verified on your machine. Cerulion runs on Linux and macOS.

​
Get access

During the closed alpha, we onboard teams directly so you start with the right setup and a fast path to your first running graph. Book a 15-minute call and the team will set you up with the source and walk you through it.

Schedule a 15-minute call

Tell us about your use case and we’ll get you access to Cerulion and up and running fast.
The prerequisites and install steps below use the Cerulion source you’ll receive during onboarding. Once you have access, continue here.
The Cerulion lion relaxing on a beach chair with a coconut while code runs on a nearby laptop — onboarding the easy way

​
Prerequisites

Rust toolchain

A stable Rust toolchain with cargo, installed via rustup.

cargo on PATH

Required at runtime. cerulion node build shells out to cargo, and cerulion graph run loads the compiled node libraries it produces.
cargo must be on your PATH even after installation. The CLI shells out to cargo build when you build a node, and it loads the resulting compiled libraries (.dylib on macOS, .so on Linux) when you run a graph. Without cargo, those commands fail.
Install the Rust toolchain with rustup if you do not already have it: 
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
Confirm cargo is available: 
cargo --version

​
Install the CLI

Once you have access to the Cerulion repository, build the CLI from source and install the cerulion binary onto your PATH. Building from source gives you the full toolchain in a single cargo install --path step; a one-line installer (Homebrew / curl | sh) is coming as Cerulion opens up.

Get the source

Clone the Cerulion repository to your machine. You should have the workspace that contains the cerulion_cli crate.

Install the binary

From the repository root, build and install the CLI with cargo:
cargo install --path cerulion_cli
This compiles the cerulion_cli crate and places the cerulion binary in your Cargo bin directory (~/.cargo/bin), which rustup adds to your PATH.

Confirm it is on your PATH

Open a new shell so the updated PATH takes effect, then check that the binary resolves:
which cerulion
Generated node crates depend on cerulion_core and native_ros2_messages, which the CLI resolves relative to the Cerulion source tree: an absolute path to your checkout when it can be located, otherwise a sibling ../cerulion_core (with a warning). Create your workspaces near the source checkout so node crates resolve their dependencies and build cleanly. Packaged dependencies are on the way as Cerulion opens up.

​
Verify the installation

Confirm everything is wired up in three quick checks: print the version, list the available commands, and scaffold a throwaway workspace.

Check the version

cerulion --version

List the commands

Confirm the CLI runs and prints its help:
cerulion --help
You should see the top-level commands: workspace, node, graph, topic, schema, tui, trace, and clean.

Create a smoke-test workspace

Create a scratch workspace to confirm the CLI can scaffold a project:
cerulion workspace create install_check
Expected output:
Created workspace at install_check
cerulion --version printed a version, cerulion --help listed the commands, and cerulion workspace create install_check created a new workspace. Your installation is working. You can delete the install_check directory once you are satisfied.
The Cerulion lion celebrating with balloons and a Welcome to Cerulion banner

​
Next steps

Quickstart

Build and run your first two-node graph end to end.

Concepts

Understand workspaces, nodes, graphs, topics, and schemas.