Installation

ForkPress ships native release artifacts for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

macOS

brew install automattic/tap/forkpress

Without Homebrew:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Automattic/forkpress/trunk/scripts/install.sh | sh

Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Automattic/forkpress/trunk/scripts/install.sh | sh

This installs forkpress into $HOME/.local/bin.

If you already use Homebrew on Linux, this works too:

brew install automattic/tap/forkpress

Windows

Download ForkPressSetup.exe from https://github.com/Automattic/forkpress/releases and run it.

The installer:

installs forkpress.exe;
adds ForkPress to the user PATH;
prepares a clone-capable ReFS Dev Drive;
creates a starter site;
installs Start Menu and desktop shortcuts.

The installer does not require WSL, Docker, WinFsp, or manual Windows feature setup.

Local launcher

Use the launcher when a project should carry its own ForkPress entry point:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Automattic/forkpress/trunk/scripts/forkpress -o forkpress
chmod +x forkpress
./forkpress init

The launcher downloads and verifies the real binary on first run, then caches it under .forkpress-bin/ next to the launcher.

Pinning

Pin the installer or launcher to a release:

FORKPRESS_VERSION=vX.Y.Z ./forkpress serve

The installer also accepts the variable:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Automattic/forkpress/trunk/scripts/install.sh | FORKPRESS_VERSION=vX.Y.Z sh

Useful overrides:

Variable	Used by	Purpose
`FORKPRESS_VERSION`	installer, launcher	Release version, with or without a leading `v`. Defaults to `latest`.
`FORKPRESS_INSTALL_DIR`	installer	Destination directory. Defaults to `$HOME/.local/bin`.
`FORKPRESS_CACHE_DIR`	launcher	Binary cache directory. Defaults to `.forkpress-bin` beside the launcher.
`FORKPRESS_REFRESH`	launcher	Set to `1` to re-download even when a cached binary exists.
`FORKPRESS_TARGET`	installer, launcher	Force a release target instead of auto-detecting.
`FORKPRESS_REPO`	installer, launcher	Alternate `owner/repo` for testing release artifacts.
`FORKPRESS_RELEASE_BASE_URL`	installer, launcher	Alternate release asset base URL for testing.

Manual downloads

Release artifacts are available from https://github.com/Automattic/forkpress/releases.

Platform	Artifact
macOS Apple silicon	`forkpress-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz`
macOS Intel	`forkpress-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz`
Linux ARM64	`forkpress-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz`
Linux x86_64	`forkpress-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz`
Windows x86_64	`ForkPressSetup.exe` and `forkpress-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip`

For macOS and Linux:

curl -L -o forkpress.tar.gz \
  "https://github.com/Automattic/forkpress/releases/download/<tag>/forkpress-<target>.tar.gz"
tar -xzf forkpress.tar.gz
chmod +x forkpress
./forkpress --version

Replace <tag> with a release tag like vX.Y.Z and <target> with one of the artifact targets from the table.

Check SHA256SUMS from the same release before trusting manually downloaded artifacts.