installation

Installation

Early development. Expect rough edges and changes between releases.

Download

Every release is on GitHub Releases, and the current one on rcommander.net. rCommander ships portable for Windows, Linux and macOS: no installer and no administrator rights are needed. Each archive carries a VERSION.txt that names the version and the build profile.

• Windows x64: rcommander-<version>-windows-x64.zip - unpack it anywhere and start rcommander.exe.
• Linux x64 and arm64: rcommander-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz or -linux-arm64.tar.gz (glibc 2.39 or newer, e.g. Ubuntu 24.04) - unpack it and start ./rcommander from a terminal.
• macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel): rcommander-<version>-macos-aarch64.zip or -macos-x86_64.zip - unzip it and move rCommander.app to Applications. The app is signed ad hoc, not notarised, so the first start needs a right-click on it and Open (or xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/rCommander.app in a terminal).

Every release lists its files with their SHA-256 in SHA256SUMS.

Updates

rCommander checks for new versions by itself and installs a signed update on your word, or by itself when you quit or while it is idle - see Updates. To replace the files by hand, close rCommander first, and close an MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code) that started rcommander mcp without a window running: that process runs the same file until its client ends.

Where your data lives

All settings, the connection tree and the encrypted vault are kept in one database file, rcommander.db, in your user profile (on Windows under %APPDATA%). Removing rCommander means deleting the program folder and, if you want, that file. A master password exists only if you store passwords or keys; see Connections.

Building from source

The source is on GitHub, degoya/rCommander. rCommander is developed in WSL2 on Windows and cross-built for Windows with cargo-xwin. In short, inside a WSL2 Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt install build-essential clang cmake lld llvm nasm ninja-build pkg-config
cargo install cargo-xwin --version 0.23.1 --locked
git clone https://github.com/degoya/rCommander.git
cd rCommander
scripts/run-windows.sh            # builds, copies the .exe to %LOCALAPPDATA%\rcommander-dev\ and starts it
scripts/package-windows.sh        # builds the zip under artifacts/windows/

rustup must be installed; the pinned Rust version and the Windows target are installed automatically on the first build. scripts/check.sh runs the formatting, lint and test checks; the repository's scripts/README.md lists every script.

Contributing

Bug reports and ideas are welcome as issues. The GitHub repository is an export of the development repository, refreshed at every release: a pull request is a proposal the maintainer applies by hand, with credit. The repository's CONTRIBUTING.md explains how, and SECURITY.md how to report a vulnerability privately.