Install xxh with Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• xxh
• xxh.bash
• xxh.xsh
• xxh.zsh

Project history

The project grew out of a common dotfile and remote-login annoyance: a heavily customized local shell disappears when a user logs in to an unfamiliar server. The README frames xxh around that problem and around the goal of bringing shells such as xonsh, zsh, fish, bash, and osquery to remote hosts.

The design evolved around small, forkable shell and plugin packages. Instead of copying a user's private dotfiles wholesale, xxh encourages reusable shell entrypoints and prerun plugins, so a remote environment can be assembled locally, uploaded, used, and removed by deleting the remote .xxh directory.

Adoption history

xxh adoption has been strongest in the remote-development and shell-customization niche rather than in base operating systems. Its README lists Python package installation, pipx, conda-forge, Homebrew, MacPorts, portable Linux archives, and AppImage as distribution paths, reflecting a tool aimed at users who move between many hosts and package ecosystems.

The surrounding plugin repositories are part of the adoption story: zsh and fish integrations, Oh My Zsh and Oh My Fish support, Powerlevel10k, starship, vim, zoxide, Docker, Python, and dotfiles plugins show the project being used as a portable terminal-environment framework rather than a single binary.

How it is used

In practice, users invoke xxh where they would normally invoke ssh, preserving ordinary SSH arguments while adding xxh-specific options with plus-prefixed flags. Common workflows include selecting a shell for a host, preinstalling plugins, forcing a remote reinstall, choosing the remote home/hermetic level, or using seamless mode from the local shell.

The package is useful when a developer has access to many Linux hosts but cannot install packages globally, wants a familiar shell on ephemeral machines, or needs a repeatable remote command environment without leaving long-lived files behind.

Why package nerds care

xxh is package-nerd interesting because it packages a personal environment rather than just a program. It sits at the intersection of SSH, dotfiles, shell frameworks, portable binaries, and plugin packaging, making explicit the messy work many developers otherwise solve with ad hoc scp, curl, and bootstrap scripts.

Its plus-option convention and forkable package model also show a pragmatic packaging lesson: when a wrapper must pass through the native tool's flags, namespacing the wrapper's own options keeps the command line usable.

Timeline

• 2019: Public discussion and package pages show xxh being promoted as a way to bring zsh, Oh My Zsh, and other shells through SSH without root access on the host.
• 2020: Homebrew, MacPorts, conda-forge, pip, pipx, AppImage, and portable Linux archive installation paths are documented in the project README.
• 2020s: The shell and plugin ecosystem grows around xonsh, zsh, fish, bash, osquery, prerun plugins, and cookiecutter templates for new plugins.

Related projects

• OpenSSH is the underlying transport and user-facing model that xxh wraps rather than replaces.
• xonsh, zsh, fish, bash, and osquery are supported shell entrypoints in the xxh ecosystem.
• Oh My Zsh, Oh My Fish, Powerlevel10k, starship, zoxide, vim, and Docker appear as examples of portable shell and prerun plugin targets.

Sources

• https://github.com/xxh/xxh
• https://pypi.org/project/xxh-xxh/0.7.3/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/zsh/comments/fiq9w2/bring_zsh_with_ohmyzsh_wherever_you_go_through/