## Creating the launch script

Pants is invoked via a launch script named `./pants` , saved at the root of the repository. This script will install Pants and handle upgrades.

First, set up a minimal `pants.toml` config file to instruct the script to download the latest 2.13 release:

Then, download the script:

Now, run this to bootstrap Pants and to verify the version it installs:

📘

Add `./pants` to version control

You should check the `./pants` script into your repo so that all users can easily run Pants.

👍

Upgrading Pants

The `./pants` script will automatically install and use the Pants version specified in `pants.toml`, so upgrading Pants is as simple as editing `pants_version` in that file.

## Running Pants from unreleased builds

To use an unreleased build of Pants from the [pantsbuild/pants](🔗) main branch, locate the main branch SHA, set PANTS_SHA=<SHA> in the environment, and run `./pants` as usual:

## Building Pants from sources

We currently distribute Pants for Linux (x86_64) and macOS.

If you need to run Pants on some other platform, such as Linux on ARM or Alpine Linux, you can try building it yourself by checking out the [Pants repo](🔗), and running `./pants package src/python/pants:pants-packaged` to build a wheel.

## Running Pants from sources

See [here](🔗) for instructions on how to run Pants directly from its sources.

This is useful when making changes directly to Pants, to see how those changes impact your repo.