Installing Elm locally

Learn how to install Elm locally to solve Exercism's exercises on your own machine


The current version of elm is 0.19.1. Installation instructions change as the language evolves. For up-to-date installation instructions head to installation instructions of the elm guide.

Additional Tools

elm-test

The tool used to run the tests from the command line is called elm-test. Currently elm-test requires Node.js and npm, so if you haven't already please [install first Node.js and npm][npm-insall]. Once you have npm installed, you can install elm-test with:

npm install --global elm-test@latest-0.19.1

More info available on the npm home page of elm-test.

elm-format

Most elm programmers use elm-format to format their elm code. It is a zero configuration code formatting tool. It may feel a bit frustrating at the beginning if you are not used to automatic formatting tools, but once you get used to it, you start wondering how you could code without it previously. It can also be installed with npm:

npm install --global elm-format@latest-0.19.1

More info available on elm-format home page on GitHub.

Text Editor

Elm support is good for at least IntelliJ, and text editors compatible with the elm language server such as VS Code, Sublime Text or Vim.

Permission Errors with npm

You may be facing EACCESS permissions error with npm when installing elm-test or elm-format. Please follow instructions on npm website if that is the case. Resolving EACCES permissions errors when installing packages globally.