Get started¶

Beet is a development toolkit for working with Minecraft data and resource packs. This section will explain how to install beet and get started with a first project.

Installation¶

Beet is written in Python, and is published as a Python package. We recommend to use a Python virtual environment when installing with pip or with uv.

Prerequisites

You need to have Python and a Python package manager installed on your system before you install Beet. We recommend you follow the Python Setup and Usage instructions for your operating system provided on the Python website.

Install with pip¶

Beet can be installed into a virtual environment with pip.

Open up a terminal window and install Beet by first setting up a virtual environment and then using pip to install the Beet package into it:

Windows macOS Linux

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install beet

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install beet

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install beet

Install with uv¶

If you are developing software using Python, chances are you're already using uv as a package manager, which has become popular in recent years. To install Beet with uv, use:

uv init
uv add beet

Create a project¶

Beet projects start with a configuration file in the root of your project.

beet.json

{
    "name": "My First Pack",
    "description": "Learning beet!",

    "data_pack": {
        "load": ["src"]
    },

    "output": "build"
}

This describes a basic data pack which has a name, description, where to load in the data pack, and finally, where the output pack will be produced.

To test it out, you can create a data pack function inside the src folder.

src/data/example/function/hello.mcfunction

say hello beet

Build the pack¶

Now, navigating back to the root directory, you can invoke the build process and your pack will build, check it out in the output directory!

beet build

Alternatively, beet can watch the source files and automatically build the pack when it detects changes:

beet watch

Link to a world¶

It is possible to automatically link the output pack to a world in your saves folder.

beet build --link "My World"

This will automatically look for the minecraft folder. If you are using a third party launcher, you can override this with the MINECRAFT_PATH environment variable.