Prerequisites

Git

Archetect is a single native binary designed for use on the command line. Technically, placing this on your shell's path is all you would need to get going. You could limit yourself to generating projects from archetypes authored or downloaded on your local machine. But that's no fun.

Archetect was designed to work with git, and you'll want to have git set up on your machine to unleash it's full power. Furthermore, to get the best experience, you'll also want to set up SSH password-less authentication on any git hosts you might expect to pull archetypes from.

Setting up git is beyond the scope of this book. There are many resources available online for your specific platform. GitHub's own documentation on the subject is a good place to start.

If you are able to execute the following command from your shell's command line in a directory you like storing coding projects, without being prompted for a password, you should be ready to go:

git clone git@github.com:archetect/archetect.git

A Note on Windows

Archetect works best with a Unix-like shell with Emoji support. Archetect works flawlessly with wt.exe.

In addition, Archetypes may contain long file names.

Windows, by default, notoriously has restrictions on path name lengths. Newer versions of Windows 10 and 11 now have support for Long Path Names, but it must be enabled in the Windows Registry (regedit.exe) by changing:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\LongPathsEnabled

from 0 to 1, and rebooting.

You will also need to enable Long Path Names with git, as well:

git config --global core.longpaths true

Note that running the Windows Installer for Archetect will make these changes for you.