Install opensearch with Homebrew, Nix, pacman, apt

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• opensearch
• opensearch-keystore
• opensearch-plugin
• opensearch-shard

Project history

AWS announced OpenSearch in April 2021 as a community-driven open source fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana, derived from Elasticsearch 7.10.2 and Kibana 7.10.2. The project also became the home for features from Open Distro for Elasticsearch, including security, alerting, machine learning, SQL, index state management, and related functionality.

The public fork work began before announcement. OpenSearch maintainers said they started preparing the codebase for public release on January 21, 2021, migrated 7.10 branch history for attribution, and removed code incompatible with Apache License 2.0.

OpenSearch 1.0 reached general availability in July 2021 as the first production-ready release. In September 2024, AWS transferred OpenSearch into the OpenSearch Software Foundation under the Linux Foundation, a governance change intended to support vendor-neutral collaboration around search, analytics, observability, and vector database software.

Adoption history

OpenSearch attracted early public support from organizations that depended on Apache-licensed Elasticsearch-compatible software, including Red Hat, SAP, Capital One, and Logz.io in the launch announcement. The project later gained a Linux Foundation home with premier members including AWS, SAP, and Uber.

Managed service adoption is an important part of the project's footprint. Amazon OpenSearch Service provides hosted OpenSearch clusters and supports OpenSearch plus legacy Elasticsearch OSS up to 7.10, making the open source package and the cloud service part of the same migration story for many operators.

How it is used

Developers and operators run OpenSearch clusters for full-text search, log analytics, observability, security analytics, application search, and vector or hybrid retrieval workloads. The official getting-started documentation describes OpenSearch as a distributed search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene, with fielded search, multi-index search, scoring, sorting, and aggregations.

The Homebrew package exposes the server plus administrative helpers such as `opensearch-plugin`, `opensearch-keystore`, and `opensearch-shard`. In practice that means a local package install can run a development node, test plugins, manage secure settings, or inspect shard-level data without a full managed service.

Why package nerds care

OpenSearch is package-nerd catnip because it is a fork where packaging, licensing, compatibility, and ecosystem governance are inseparable. The formula ships a JVM search server, plugin interface, config tree, and operational commands whose version must align with Dashboards and client libraries.

Its upgrade paths from Elasticsearch OSS and Open Distro make it a live example of package lineage: one dependency graph, one API surface, and one file-format ecosystem had to be carried across a fork while preserving operator trust.

Timeline

• 2021-01-21: Maintainers began preparing the OpenSearch and Dashboards forks for public release.
• 2021-04-12: AWS announced OpenSearch as a fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana.
• 2021-07-12: OpenSearch 1.0 reached general availability.
• 2024-09-16: The OpenSearch Software Foundation launched under the Linux Foundation and OpenSearch moved to that foundation.

Related projects

• OpenSearch is paired with OpenSearch Dashboards and descends from Elasticsearch OSS. Related OpenSearch ecosystem projects include OpenSearch plugins, Data Prepper, client libraries, and managed services such as Amazon OpenSearch Service.

Sources

• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/introducing-opensearch/
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/opensearch-service/latest/developerguide/what-is.html
• https://docs.opensearch.org/latest/getting-started/
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/opensearch
• https://forum.opensearch.org/t/preparing-opensearch-and-opensearch-dashboards-for-release/5567
• https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch
• https://opensearch.org/about/
• https://opensearch.org/blog/opensearch-general-availability-announcement/
• https://opensearch.org/faq/
• https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-opensearch-software-foundation-to-foster-open-collaboration-in-search-and-analytics