Installation

Middleman is distributed using the RubyGems package manager. This means you will need both the Ruby language runtime installed and RubyGems to begin using Middleman.

macOS comes prepackaged with both Ruby and RubyGems, however, some of the Middleman's dependencies need to be compiled during installation and on macOS that requires Xcode Command Line Tools. Xcode can be installed from the terminal:

$ xcode-select --install

Once you have Ruby and RubyGems up and running, execute the following from the command line:

$ gem install middleman

This will install Middleman, its dependencies and the command-line tools for using Middleman.

The installation process will add one new command to your environment, with three useful features:

$ middleman init
$ middleman server
$ middleman build

The uses of each of these commands will be covered in the next section, Start a New Site.