Install jsonnet with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• jsonnet
• jsonnetfmt

Project history

The Jsonnet website says the language began in early 2014 as a Google 20 percent project and launched on August 6. The same page explains that its design was influenced by internal Google configuration languages and experience configuring large systems, while also stating that Jsonnet is not an official Google product.

The public google/jsonnet repository's first commit was made on 2014-08-06. A Google Open Source Blog post on 2015-04-20 described Jsonnet as a simple but rich configuration language that had been quietly released a few months earlier and emphasized that valid JSON is also valid Jsonnet.

The original implementation lives in the google/jsonnet repository. The README points users to the Jsonnet website for documentation and names go-jsonnet, the Go implementation, as a faster option for some use cases.

Adoption history

Jsonnet's adoption grew around infrastructure and configuration workflows where plain JSON was too repetitive but teams still wanted deterministic data generation. The official site describes use by many companies and projects, and the GitHub README documents packaging through Homebrew, MSYS2, PyPI bindings, and vcpkg.

How it is used

Users run `jsonnet` on a file or expression to emit JSON, use `jsonnetfmt` to reformat source, and use manifests to generate non-JSON output. The language is side-effect free and designed for modular configuration data rather than general application programming.

Why package nerds care

Jsonnet matters to package nerds because it created a recognizable ecosystem: interpreters, bindings, formatters, package-manager formulas, and Jsonnet-specific dependency tools such as jsonnet-bundler. It is also a useful reference point in debates about JSON-compatible configuration languages versus general-purpose code generation.

Timeline

• 2014: Jsonnet began in early 2014 as a Google 20 percent project.
• 2014-08-06: Jsonnet launched and the public GitHub repository received its initial commit.
• 2015-04-20: Google Open Source Blog introduced Jsonnet as a richer language for composing JSON.
• 2026-03-24: v0.22.0 release published.

Related projects

• Jsonnet is directly related to go-jsonnet, jsonnet-bundler, Jsonnet language bindings, jsonnetfmt, and configuration ecosystems that consume generated JSON or YAML.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/google/jsonnet
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/jsonnet
• https://github.com/google/jsonnet
• https://github.com/google/jsonnet/commit/55002bc60e4679800958828ff1c2da6de7db5007
• https://github.com/google/jsonnet/releases/tag/v0.22.0
• https://jsonnet.org/
• https://jsonnet.org/articles/design.html
• https://jsonnet.org/learning/getting_started.html
• https://opensource.googleblog.com/2015/04/jsonnet-more-elegant-language-for.html