Install

From crates.io (recommended)

cargo install vcfkit-cli
vcfkit --version
# vcfkit 0.1.5

Requires Rust 1.75+. Install Rust from rustup.rs if needed.

Pre-built binaries

Download from GitHub Releases — no Rust required.

Available for:

• macOS (aarch64 / x86_64)
• Linux (x86_64 / aarch64)
• Windows (x86_64)

# macOS example
curl -L https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit/releases/latest/download/vcfkit-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz | tar xz
./vcfkit --version

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/robertlangdonn/vcfkit
cd vcfkit
cargo build --release
./target/release/vcfkit --version

Shell completions

# Bash
vcfkit completions bash >> ~/.bashrc

# Zsh
vcfkit completions zsh >> ~/.zshrc

# Fish
vcfkit completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/vcfkit.fish

Verify install

echo '##fileformat=VCFv4.2
#CHROM  POS  ID  REF  ALT  QUAL  FILTER  INFO
chr1  100  .  A  T  .  .  .' | vcfkit filter -e 'POS > 50'

Expected output: the header + the variant line + a stats line.

Requirements

• No runtime dependencies — single static binary
• Reference FASTA files for normalize and liftover (not included; download from UCSC or Ensembl)
• Chain files for liftover (see liftover docs)