Installation

FORGE Studio is an Electron desktop application. Pre-built binaries are distributed as a macOS .dmg and Linux .AppImage/.deb. For development, build from source.

System Requirements

Platform	Minimum
macOS	13 Ventura (Apple Silicon or Intel)
Linux	Ubuntu 24.04+ (x86_64) — see note below
Node.js	20.x (for building from source)
RAM	8 GB (16 GB+ recommended for large datasets)

Optional Backends

FORGE Studio auto-detects these at startup — install only what you need:

Backend	Minimum Version
MATLAB	R2020a
Python	3.10
Julia	1.9
CUDA	11.8 (Linux, for FORGE GPU binaries)

Metal is used automatically on Apple Silicon — no additional GPU setup needed.

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Installing from a Pre-Built Binary

macOS

1. Download FORGE-Studio-x.y.z.dmg from the releases page.
2. Open the DMG and drag FORGE Studio to /Applications.
3. On first launch, right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper (first run only).

Unsigned / un-notarized builds

Current builds are ad-hoc signed but not notarized (Apple notarization requires a paid Developer ID certificate). On a machine other than the one that built the app, Gatekeeper quarantines the download, and the right-click → Open step above may not be enough — macOS can report that the app is "damaged and can't be opened." That message is the quarantine flag, not a corrupted download.

To clear it, strip the quarantine attribute once after copying to /Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/FORGE Studio.app"

Then launch normally. This is safe for trusted internal/lab distribution; a notarized build (once a Developer ID certificate is configured) removes the need for this step entirely.

Linux

Requires Ubuntu 24.04 or newer (glibc ≥ 2.39). The bundled FORGE binaries are built on Ubuntu 24.04, so they will not run on 22.04 or earlier (you'll see GLIBC_.../GLIBCXX_... "version not found" errors). The same glibc floor applies to RHEL/Rocky Linux: only Rocky 10 is supported today — run the AppImage there. (RHEL/Rocky 9 and a native .rpm are tracked in #80.)

AppImage:

chmod +x FORGE-Studio-x.y.z.AppImage
./FORGE-Studio-x.y.z.AppImage

Debian/Ubuntu package:

sudo dpkg -i forge-studio_x.y.z_amd64.deb
forge-studio

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Building from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/your-org/forge-studio.git
cd forge-studio

# Install Node.js dependencies
npm install

# Start in development mode (hot reload)
npm run dev

# Or build a production binary
npm run dist

Python venv (for development testing)

The project includes a pyproject.toml managed with uv:

# Install uv if needed
curl -Lsf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Create venv and install dependencies
uv sync

# The venv is at .venv/
.venv/bin/python3 --version

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Updating

When a new version is available, FORGE Studio will show an update badge in the title bar. Go to Settings → About → Check for Updates to download and install automatically.

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Next Steps

• First Run → — complete the setup wizard
• Quick Start → — run your first reconstruction