Annexes Overview

Summary

Annexes are Zinit extensions loaded as plugins that add new commands, URL preprocessors, post-install hooks, and other capabilities to the plugin manager itself.

Details

An annex is a regular plugin that Zinit recognizes as an extension and integrates deeply. Once loaded, an annex can:

• Add new subcommands to the zinit command.
• Register URL preprocessors that transform plugin/snippet URLs before fetching (used by zinit-annex-readurl to derive download URLs from web pages automatically).
• Register post-install and post-update hooks that run transparently after cloning or updating.
• Expose new ices (e.g. sbin, fbin, gem, node, pip, rustup from the Bin-Gem-Node annex).

Annexes are maintained in the zdharma-continuum GitHub organization. The four commonly used default annexes are:

Annex	Purpose
zinit-annex-readurl	Auto-derive download URLs from web pages
zinit-annex-bin-gem-node	Install binaries, Ruby gems, Node packages, Rust crates via shims
zinit-annex-patch-dl	Download and apply patches before building
zinit-annex-rust	Install and manage Rust toolchain and crates

Annexes are loaded the same way as plugins, typically with light-mode to skip reporting overhead.

Examples

# Load the four default annexes
zinit light-mode for \
  zdharma-continuum/zinit-annex-readurl \
  zdharma-continuum/zinit-annex-bin-gem-node \
  zdharma-continuum/zinit-annex-patch-dl \
  zdharma-continuum/zinit-annex-rust

# Using sbin ice from bin-gem-node annex to install a shim
zi as'null' lucid sbin wait'1' for \
  Fakerr/git-recall \
  paulirish/git-open

See Also

• zinit-home-directory for where annex data is stored.