How to Set Custom Mise Installs Directory

How I made mise install Zig into a repo-local directory so VS Code could find the binary.

I was working on a private project called cpm. One component, cpm-cli, is written in Zig. I pinned zig and zls with mise, but the Zig VS Code extension did not find the binary when mise installed it into the global mise location. The fix was tiny and worth keeping in my notes.

Put this in your mise.toml (I keep mine in cli/mise.toml):

[env]
# install mise-managed tools into a directory inside this repo
MISE_INSTALLS_DIR = "{{config_root}}/.mise/installs"

[tools]
zig = "0.15.2"
zls = "0.15.0"

Why this works for me

• MISE_INSTALLS_DIR tells mise where to put the downloaded tool binaries.
• {{config_root}} resolves to the directory that contains the config file, so the path is project-relative and predictable.
• With the example above, if the config is cli/mise.toml, mise will put binaries in cli/.mise/installs/..., which my editor can see.

What I did

1. Added the snippet to cli/mise.toml.

2. From the cli folder ran:

   Shell

   Copy

   cd cli
   mise install

3. Checked the installed binary:

   Shell

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   ls -l .mise/installs/*/bin/zig

The Zig binary appeared under the repo-local .mise directory, and the VS Code extension stopped complaining.

A tiny nicety: ignore the installs directory in git

Create or edit cli/.gitignore and add:

# Ignore locally-installed mise tools
.mise/

Notes from my run

• If your mise.toml is at repo root, {{config_root}}/.mise/installs will be at repo root. If your tooling lives in a cli folder, put the mise config in cli and installs will be under cli/.mise/installs.
• For CI, run the same mise install step in the same relative path before building.