---
title: Download Different Versions of Drupal with Drush
date: 2013-12-31
excerpt: How to download different versions of Drupal core using Drush.
tags:
    - drupal
    - drupal-planet
    - drush
---

If you use
[Drush](https://raw.github.com/drush-ops/drush/master/README.md 'About Drush'),
it's likely that you've used the `drush pm-download` (or `drush dl` for short)
command to start a new project. This command downloads projects from Drupal.org,
but if you don't specify a project or type "drush dl drupal", the command will
download the current stable version of Drupal core. Currently, this will be
Drupal 7 with that being the current stable version of core at the time of
writing this post.

But what if you don't want Drupal 7?

I still maintain a number of Drupal 6 sites and occassionally need to download
Drupal 6 core as opposed to Drupal 7. I'm also experimenting with Drupal 8 so I
need to download that as well.

By declarding the core version of Drupal, such as "drupal-6", Drush will
download that instead.

```bash
$ drush dl drupal-6
```

This downloads the most recent stable version of Drupal 6. If you don't want
that, you can add the --select and additionally the --all options to be
presented with an entire list to chose from.

```bash
$ drush dl drupal-6 --select
$ drush dl drupal-6 --select --all
```

If you want the most recent development version, just type:

```bash
$ drush dl drupal-6.x
```

The same can be done for other core versions of Drupal, from Drupal 5 upwards.

```bash
# This will download Drupal 5
$ drush dl drupal-5
# This will download Drupal 8
$ drush dl drupal-8
```

For a full list of the available options, type "drush help pm-download" into a
Terminal window or take a look at the entry on
[drush.ws](http://drush.ws/#pm-download, 'The entry for pm-download on drush.ws').