Get Started Developing with Holochain

Hardware Requirements

Install the Holochain Dev Environment

Prerequisite for Windows: WSL2

The Nix package manager, which we use to install and manage Holochain development tools, only supports Mac and Linux. Please install Linux under Windows with WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

Holochain is supported for the Ubuntu distribution under WSL2.

Install the Nix Package Manager and set up Holochain binary cache

At a command line:

bash <(curl https://holochain.github.io/holochain/setup.sh)

Verify installation

In a new shell session type:

nix run --refresh -j0 -v github:holochain/holochain#hc-scaffold -- --version

Look out for binaries being copied from holochain-ci.cachix. It proves that the Cachix binary cache is configured correctly. If it works, there will be lines like this:

downloading 'https://holochain-ci.cachix.org/nar/.nar.zst'...

The Holochain Dev Environment is configured successfully on your system if you see a scaffolding version like

holochain_scaffolding_cli x.y.z

at the end of the output.

Scaffold An Example Holochain App

Type the following at the command line:

nix run github:holochain/holochain#hc-scaffold -- example forum

When prompted, select the UI framework you prefer.

After completing the project setup, the scaffolding tool will output the commands to run the Holochain app.

Next Step

Explore project structure →

Learn More

  1. Dive into the Holochain Core Concepts.
  2. Take a look at the developer documentation.
  3. Join the discussion in the HC.dev discord.
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