eLabFTW Desktop

⚠️ [WARNING]

This project is an early experimental preview.

It is public for development visibility only and is not ready for use. Do not use it for real work, testing workflows, or production data.

The recommended and supported way to run eLabFTW is the Docker-based web application. See the official documentation.

Development Setup

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Prerequisites

Go

Minimum version: Go 1.22+

Check:

go version

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Node.js

• Minimum version: Node.js 18+
• Recommended: Node.js 20+

node -v
npm -v

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Wails CLI

Install:

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

Ensure it's in your PATH:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/go/bin"

Verify:

wails doctor

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Linux dependencies

Wails requires system libraries (GTK + WebKitGTK).

Fedora (≥ 40)

sudo dnf install gtk3-devel webkit2gtk4.1-devel pkgconf-pkg-config gcc gcc-c++

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev pkg-config

Archlinux

sudo pacman -Syu webkit2gtk-4.1

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Setup

git clone https://github.com/elabftw/desktop.git
cd desktop
#install frontend dependencies
cd frontend
npm install
# go back to parent directory
cd ..

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Run the application

Standard (most Linux distros)

wails dev

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⚠️ Fedora users (important)

On Fedora ≥ 40, WebKitGTK 4.1 is used instead of 4.0. Wails defaults to 4.0, so you must run:

wails dev -tags webkit2_41

If you don't use this flag, you may see errors like:

Package 'webkit2gtk-4.0' not found
Build error - exit status 1

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🖥 What to expect

• A native desktop window should open automatically
• The app is not meant to run in a browser

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🌐 Dev URLs

During development, Wails exposes:

• Frontend only (no Go backend): http://localhost:5173/

• Internal dev server (Wails): http://localhost:34115

⚠️ These are for debugging only. The actual app runs in the native window.