Install jo with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• jo

Project history

The GitHub repository was created on March 4, 2016, and Jan-Piet Mens published a companion article on March 5 explaining the motivation: producing valid JSON from shell scripts becomes hard once quoting, variables, and embedded strings enter the picture. The early 0.x releases followed within days, and 1.0 arrived on March 11, 2016.

The changelog shows a project that grew carefully around shell ergonomics: nested elements, pretty printing, booleans, file inclusion, OpenBSD pledge support, type coercion, object paths, Docker support, array reading, zsh completion, Meson support, and fixes for Windows and long-line stdin handling.

Adoption history

jo spread through package managers because it solves a narrow shell-scripting pain point without pulling in a large runtime. Its README lists Homebrew, MacPorts, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, Snap, Scoop, AIX, Void Linux, Arch, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Guix, pkgsrc, Repology, and Docker as distribution routes or related package entries.

How it is used

Users call jo with key=value words to emit JSON objects, use -a for arrays, -p for pretty output, and type prefixes or special value forms when they need stronger control over numbers, booleans, nulls, file contents, or nested data. It is commonly paired with shell scripts, HTTP clients, monitoring hooks, and other command-line pipelines.

Why package nerds care

jo is package-nerd significant because it is the Unix philosophy version of JSON generation: small, composable, scriptable, packaged almost everywhere, and complementary to jq. It sits in the gap between fragile echo/printf JSON and starting a Python, Ruby, Node, or jq program just to build an object.

Timeline

• 2016: Repository created and 0.3 through 1.0 releases published in March.
• 2017: 1.1 adds type coercion and more test coverage.
• 2018: 1.2 adds object-path support and Dockerfile work.
• 2019: 1.3 adds JSON array reading and nested-data-from-pipes support.
• 2020: 1.4 includes build and documentation fixes.
• 2022: 1.5 through 1.9 add zsh completion, Meson work, Windows fixes, output-file support, and long-line stdin fixes.

Related projects

• jq is the natural counterpart for consuming and transforming JSON in shell pipelines.
• The jo README names related JSON-building tools including gjo, rjo, jjo, jf, and gojo.

Sources

• The README supplies the package-manager spread, examples, related projects, and link to the author's origin article.
• The changelog and GitHub releases supply the release timeline.
• The manpage supplies the argument and type-coercion behavior.