Install influxdb@1 with Homebrew, scoop, apt, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• influx_inspect
• influx_tools
• influxd

Project history

InfluxDB grew out of Errplane, a monitoring SaaS company whose founders repeatedly needed a database designed for irregular time-series events. Paul Dix's retrospective says the open source database idea was validated by monitoring and DevOps users at Monitorama in September 2013, after earlier experiments with Cassandra, Redis, OpenTSDB, Graphite, and RRD did not match their requirements.

The 1.0 release in 2016 marked the point where InfluxData committed to stable 1.x APIs and storage compatibility. That mattered because pre-1.0 releases moved quickly and sometimes broke interfaces; 1.x gave operators a predictable base for metrics, monitoring, and IoT data stores.

Adoption history

By the 1.0 announcement, InfluxData reported tens of thousands of organizations using InfluxDB for network infrastructure, security, containers, solar, agriculture, science, user analytics, business intelligence, and home automation. The same post tied InfluxDB to the broader TICK stack with Telegraf for collection and Kapacitor for processing and alerting.

The 1.x line remained important after 2.x work began because many deployments depended on InfluxQL, existing line-protocol ingest paths, and stable TSM data files. InfluxDB 1.8 later added production-ready Flux support and 2.0-compatible API endpoints, giving 1.x installations a migration bridge.

How it is used

The Homebrew package installs server and utility binaries such as `influxd`, `influx`, `influx_inspect`, and `influx_tools`. It is used as a local time-series daemon, a development database for metrics-heavy applications, or a compatibility target for systems written around the 1.x API.

Package users care about the `@1` suffix because InfluxDB's major versions carry different operational models. Keeping 1.x separately installable avoids forcing a database and client migration when an application only needs the established 1.x server.

Why package nerds care

InfluxDB 1.x is a classic package-manager case: a fast-moving infrastructure database that became important enough to need major-version formulae. It also represents the Go-era shift toward single-purpose infrastructure daemons with strong CLI and HTTP surfaces.

For package nerds, it sits at the center of an ecosystem rather than being just a daemon: Telegraf, Kapacitor, Chronograf, client libraries, and distro packages all orbit the same line-protocol and time-series storage conventions.

Timeline

• 2013: InfluxDB began after Errplane's monitoring work and Monitorama feedback pointed to demand for an open source time-series database.
• 2014: InfluxData raised Series A funding to accelerate the database and company around it.
• 2016: InfluxDB 1.0 and InfluxDB Enterprise reached general availability with 1.x API and storage compatibility promises.
• 2020: InfluxDB 1.8 added production-ready Flux support and 2.0 API compatibility endpoints.

Related projects

• Related projects include Telegraf, Kapacitor, Chronograf, InfluxDB Enterprise, InfluxDB Cloud, Flux, OpenTSDB, Graphite, and RRD.

Sources

• https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1
• https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb
• https://www.influxdata.com/blog/influxdb-1-0-ga-released-a-retrospective-and-whats-next/
• https://www.influxdata.com/blog/release-announcement-influxdb-with-long-awaited-features/