Installation

MonaDB ships as a Python package, a Rust library, and an interactive CLI (monadb). There is no separate server to install or configure.

Python (PyPI)

pip install monadb

>>> import monadb
>>> db = monadb.connect()

Requires Python 3.9 or later.

CLI shell (monadb)

Homebrew

brew tap rchowell/tap
brew install monadb
monadb

cargo

cargo install monadb --features cli
monadb

GitHub Releases

Download a prebuilt monadb tarball for your platform from GitHub Releases, extract, and run ./monadb.

monadb              # in-memory database
monadb ./data.db    # open or create a file

Inside the REPL, dot-commands start with . (.info, .debug, .exit). SQL statements end with ;.

Rust library (crates.io)

cargo add monadb

From source

Clone the repository and build with maturin (Python) or Cargo (CLI):

git clone https://github.com/rchowell/MonaDB.git
cd MonaDB

# Python extension
uv run maturin develop

# CLI shell
cargo run --features cli --bin monadb

Requirements

• Python 3.9+ (for pip install monadb)
• Rust 1.85+ (when building from source)
• A filesystem path for persistence, or omit the path for an in-memory database

Next: walk through a first query in the Tutorial.