---
title: Install Auspice
---

## Prerequisites
Auspice is a JavaScript program, and requires [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/) to be installed on your system.
For best results, please use Node.js version 10.

We highly recommend using [Conda](https://conda.io/docs/) to manage environments, i.e. use Conda to create an environment with Node.js installed where you can use Auspice.
It's possible to use other methods, but this documentation presupposes that you have Conda installed.

## Create a Conda Environment
```bash
conda create --name auspice nodejs=10
source activate auspice
```

> This parallels [the Nextstrain installation docs](https://nextstrain.org/docs/getting-started/local-installation#install-augur--auspice-with-conda-recommended).
You're welcome to use those instead!

## Install Auspice from npm


```bash
npm install --global auspice
```
Auspice should now be available as a command-line program -- check by running `auspice --help`.

If you look at the [release notes](releases/changelog.md) you can see the changes that have been made to Auspice (see your version of Auspice via `auspice --version`).
To upgrade, you can run

```bash
npm update --global auspice
```

## Installing from Source


This is useful for debugging, modifying the source code, or using an unpublished feature branch.
We're going to assume that you have used Conda to install Node.js as above.

```bash
# activate the correct conda enviornment
conda activate auspice

# grab the GitHub auspice repo
git checkout https://github.com/nextstrain/auspice.git
cd auspice

# install dependencies
npm install

# make `auspice` available globally
npm install --global .

# build auspice
auspice build

# test it works
auspice --version
auspice --help
```

Updating Auspice should only require pulling the new version from GitHub -- it shouldn't require any `npm` commands.
You will, however, have to re-build Auspice whenever the client-related code has changed, via `auspice build`.