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Oeiuwq Faith Blog OpenSource Porfolio

jqlang/jq

Command-line JSON processor
Source code at GitHub https://jqlang.org
jqlang/jq.json
{
  "createdAt": "2012-07-18T19:57:25Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Command-line JSON processor",
  "fullName": "jqlang/jq",
  "homepage": "https://jqlang.org",
  "language": "C",
  "name": "jq",
  "pushedAt": "2025-11-24T06:15:20Z",
  "stargazersCount": 33076,
  "topics": [
    "jq"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-25T21:33:46Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/jqlang/jq"
}

jq

Section titled “jq”

jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor akin to sed,awk,grep, and friends for JSON data. It’s written in portable C and has zero runtime dependencies, allowing you to easily slice, filter, map, and transform structured data.

Documentation

Section titled “Documentation”

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

Prebuilt Binaries

Section titled “Prebuilt Binaries”

Download the latest releases from the GitHub release page.

Docker Image

Section titled “Docker Image”

Pull the jq image to start quickly with Docker.

Run with Docker

Section titled “Run with Docker”
Example: Extracting the version from a package.json file
Section titled “Example: Extracting the version from a package.json file”
Terminal window
docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/jqlang/jq:latest < package.json '.version'
Example: Extracting the version from a package.json file with a mounted volume
Section titled “Example: Extracting the version from a package.json file with a mounted volume”
Terminal window
docker run --rm -i -v "$PWD:$PWD" -w "$PWD" ghcr.io/jqlang/jq:latest '.version' package.json

Building from source

Section titled “Building from source”

Dependencies

Section titled “Dependencies”
  • libtool
  • make
  • automake
  • autoconf

Instructions

Section titled “Instructions”
Terminal window
git submodule update --init    # if building from git to get oniguruma
autoreconf -i                  # if building from git
./configure --with-oniguruma=builtin
make clean                     # if upgrading from a version previously built from source
make -j8
make check
sudo make install

Build a statically linked version:

Terminal window
make LDFLAGS=-all-static

If you’re not using the latest git version but instead building a released tarball (available on the release page), skip the autoreconf step, and flex or bison won’t be needed.

Cross-Compilation
Section titled “Cross-Compilation”

For details on cross-compilation, check out the [GitHub Actions file]!(.github/workflows/ci.yml) and the cross-compilation wiki page.

Community & Support

Section titled “Community & Support”

License

Section titled “License”

jq is released under the [MIT License]!(COPYING). jq’s documentation is licensed under the [Creative Commons CC BY 3.0]!(COPYING). jq uses parts of the open source C library “decNumber”, which is distributed under [ICU License]!(COPYING)