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Ionic CLI

The Ionic command-line interface (CLI) is the go-to tool for developing Ionic apps.

Installation#

The Ionic CLI can be installed globally with npm:

$ npm install -g @ionic/cli

Help#

The Ionic CLI ships with command documentation that is accessible with the --help flag.

$ ionic --help
$ ionic <command> --help
$ ionic <command> <subcommand> --help

Be sure to run ionic <command> --help in your project directory.

For some commands, such as ionic serve, the help documentation is contextual to the type of your project, e.g. React vs Angular.

Architecture#

The Ionic CLI is built with TypeScript and Node.js. It supports Node 10.3+, but the latest Node LTS is always recommended. Follow development on the open source GitHub repository.

Troubleshooting#

To troubleshoot issues with the Ionic CLI, the following may be useful:

  • Make sure the latest version of the Ionic CLI is installed. Get the installed version by running ionic --version.
  • Make sure the latest Node LTS is installed. See Node & npm environment setup.
  • The --verbose flag prints debugging messages, which may narrow down the issue.
  • Connection issues may be due to improperly configured proxy settings. See Using a Proxy to configure request proxying.
  • The global Ionic CLI configuration directory is ~/.ionic on all platforms. It can safely be deleted and the Ionic CLI will repopulate it, but all configuration (including user sessions) will be lost. Configure this directory with CLI environment variables.
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