Elan for Windows

Lightweight manager for Lean on Windows

Elan is a compact, free utility for Windows that makes handling Lean theorem prover installations straightforward. It prepares your development environment by adding the required Lean and lake executables to the system PATH, so projects can find and run the tools without extra setup.

Automatic detection and installation

When you open a project, Elan reads the project's lean-toolchain file and automatically downloads and configures the matching Lean release. This removes guesswork and ensures your project is built with the exact Lean version it specifies.

Command-line control for power users

If you prefer hands-on management, the elan command-line program gives you direct control over your installations. Common tasks available from the CLI include:

• Launch a specific Lean executable or environment
• Install a new Lean release
• Remove an installed Lean version
• Choose which installed release is active for your projects

Benefits for researchers and developers

Using Elan helps avoid version mismatches, reduces setup time, and keeps dependency management predictable across machines and collaborators. These conveniences make it a helpful tool for both researchers and software developers working with Lean.

Alternative option

A commonly suggested free tool is SHAREit — primarily a file-transfer application rather than a Lean version manager. If your needs are limited to moving project files between devices, a utility like SHAREit can be useful, but it won’t manage Lean installations or toolchains for you.