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How to install Drush manually

This article describes how to install Drush manually.

Most hosting accounts already include Drush by default. However, it may be a few versions behind the newest version. To run the latest version of Drush, install it manually using the following procedure.

Installing Drush

The Drush installation process uses composer, a PHP dependency manager. Therefore, if you have not already installed composer on your account, you must do so before installing Drush.

For information about how to install composer on your account, please see this article.

To install Drush, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your account using SSH.
  2. Select the Drush version you want to install:
    • To install Drush 8, type the following command: 
      composer global require drush/drush:8.x

    • To install Drush 7, type the following command:

      composer global require drush/drush:7.x

  3. Determine the CentOS version on your server. To do this, type the following command:

    uname -r
    • If the output from this command contains el7 (for example, 3.10.0-714.10.2.lve1.5.9.el7.x86_64), then your server is running CentOS 7.
    • If the output from this command contains el6 (for example, 2.6.32-673.26.1.lve1.4.27.el6.x86_64), then your server is running CentOS 6.

  4. To add Drush to your path, type one of the following commands based on the CentOS version you obtained in step 3:

    • If your server is running CentOS 7, type the following command: 
      echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc

    • If your server is running CentOS 6, type the following command:

      echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc

  5. To make the new path take effect immediately, type the following command:

    source ~/.bashrc

    Drush is now installed and ready to use on your account.

    • To confirm Drush installed correctly, type the following command: 
      drush version

      Drush should display the most recent version number (at the time this article is written, version 8.3.0 is the latest version).

    • To update Drush to the newest version, type the following command:

      composer global update drush/drush

More Information

For more information about Drush, please visit http://drush.org.


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