Install fastly with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• fastly

Project history

The fastly/cli GitHub repository was created in February 2020, and the changelog records v0.1.0 on February 5, 2020. The README describes it as a CLI for interacting with the Fastly platform and links to Fastly's official command reference.

The CLI evolved quickly through 2020 alongside Fastly's modern developer platform. Its release history shows a steady sequence of early v0.x releases, then continuing major versions as the command surface expanded across Compute, services, TLS, domains, stats, stores, authentication, and product-specific commands.

Adoption history

Fastly CLI adoption is tied to Fastly customers and developers who need repeatable edge configuration from a terminal or CI system. The official docs explicitly position it as a way to create services, manage backends and domains, upload VCL, build and deploy Compute packages, and use Fastly from a code workspace or CI environment.

Unlike a general-purpose cloud CLI, Fastly CLI is a vendor CLI with package-manager distribution through Homebrew and other installers. Its value comes from matching Fastly's API and release cadence closely enough that edge configuration can be automated without hand-written API calls.

How it is used

Common use starts with installation, authentication, and configuration, then moves to command groups such as service, domain, backend, compute, kv-store, secret-store, tls, stats, auth, profile, and whoami. The README also documents FASTLY_API_TOKEN for noninteractive authentication.

Compute workflows are a major use case: the CLI can initialize, build, serve, validate, pack, and deploy Compute packages. For legacy and CDN configuration, it also manages VCL upload and service resources such as domains and backends.

Why package nerds care

Package nerds care about Fastly CLI because it is the installable boundary between local build systems and a production edge network. It has to behave well in shells, CI jobs, and developer laptops while tracking a vendor API that changes frequently.

Its changelog is also a good example of a cloud CLI as living infrastructure: frequent releases, SemVer, monthly release scheduling, auth migrations, dependency updates, and new command groups all show the maintenance burden hidden behind a simple brew install fastly.

Timeline

• 2020: fastly/cli repository created on GitHub.
• 2020: v0.1.0 released on February 5.
• 2021: v0.24.0 released by February 2021 after rapid 2020 iteration.
• 2026: v15.x releases show ongoing monthly CLI maintenance.

Related projects

• Fastly API is the service interface exposed by the CLI.
• Fastly Compute is one of the major build and deployment workflows handled by the CLI.
• go-fastly is the Go client dependency used by Fastly tooling.

Sources

• https://github.com/fastly/cli
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fastly/cli/main/README.md
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fastly/cli/main/CHANGELOG.md
• https://www.fastly.com/documentation/reference/cli
• https://www.fastly.com/documentation/reference/tools/cli
• https://api.github.com/repos/fastly/cli