Installation

Install GitForest on macOS or Linux in under a minute. No Rust toolchain needed — prebuilt binaries are published to Google Cloud Storage from CI.

Quick install (macOS & Linux)

Install the latest release for your platform to ~/.local/bin:

$ curl -fsSL https://gitforest.net/docs/install.sh | bash

This installs three binaries:

gitforest — the daemon + CLI
git-remote-gitforest — the git remote helper that makes gitforest:// URLs work
gtfo — a shorter alias for gitforest

If your shell doesn't pick up ~/.local/bin, either open a new terminal or add it to your PATH: export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Manual download

Grab the archive for your platform from the downloads page:

$ tar xzf gitforest-linux-x64.tar.gz
$ sudo cp -r gitforest/bin/* /usr/local/bin/
$ gitforest --version

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

$ sudo apt install ./gitforest_<version>_amd64.deb
$ gitforest --version

Build from source

Prefer to build yourself? You need Rust (stable) and git:

$ git clone https://github.com/NPC-Worldwide/git-forest
$ cd git-forest
$ cargo build --release
# binaries land in target/release/{gitforest,git-remote-gitforest,gtfo}

Docker is only required for compute worker mode (running CI jobs for other peers).

Verify the install

$ gitforest --version
$ gitforest help
$ git remote-helper --help   # (if git-remote-gitforest is on PATH)

For reproducible installs, download manifest.json from the executables bucket to see the exact version and URLs, and cross-check checksums published with each GitHub release.

Upgrading

Re-run the install script — it always fetches the latest release and replaces the binaries in place.

Uninstalling

$ rm ~/.local/bin/gitforest ~/.local/bin/git-remote-gitforest ~/.local/bin/gtfo
# optionally remove your identity + config:
$ rm -rf ~/.config/gitforest

Next: Getting Started & CLI All docs