⚙️ Setup

Setup: Installing Gauge is like buying a drill plus a bit set: you first get the body (the gauge CLI), but the body alone drills nothing — you must attach the right bit for the m

Installing Gauge is like buying a drill plus a bit set: you first get the body (the gauge CLI), but the body alone drills nothing — you must attach the right bit for the material (the java plugin, the html-report plugin). That is why installation has TWO stages: the `gauge` command + `gauge install java`. Why doesn't Gauge ship everything in a single installer — why "bother" users with plugins? Because Gauge is a language-agnostic core: Java, JavaScript, Python, and C# teams share the same core; bundling every language runtime would make the installer hundreds of MB. Think of the Java parallel: you install the JDK, but Maven dependencies download per project — core and needs are separated. In a QA context this two-stage nature is trap #1 waiting on day one: the CI agent gets only the gauge CLI, the java plugin is forgotten, and the pipeline breaks with "Failed to start gauge API" — since the message never mentions plugins, teams search in the wrong place for hours. Skip the verification steps in this tab and this trap catches you in CI.

🪟 Windows Installation

🍎 macOS Installation

🐧 Linux Installation

🔌 Installing Plugins: Attaching the Bit to the Drill

Note the "Plugins: (none)" line in the gauge version output: the body is ready but there is no bit. The java plugin is required to run a Java project, and the html-report plugin for readable reports. Plugins download under ~/.gauge (%APPDATA%\gauge on Windows) and are shared by all projects — the same idea as Java's global Maven repository (~/.m2).

The Install-Verification Reflex

Make running this command a habit after every install step — the Plugins list in the output is the single source of truth.

If you see "(none)", STOP

Attempting gauge run with an empty plugin list leads straight to "Failed to start gauge API".

Run gauge install java and gauge install html-report — bake both lines into the CI image too.

Verify again, then run

Do not attempt gauge run specs before BOTH java and html-report are listed in gauge version.

🏗️ Create Your First Project: gauge init java