Installing

Build and run

make build      # builds the frontend, then the binary into bin/arca
./bin/arca

Open http://localhost:8080 and complete the setup wizard. Its first field is the setup token, which the server prints to its log when it starts on an empty database:

WARN this instance is not set up yet; the setup wizard requires this token: Zk3v…

The token is what stops whoever reaches the address first from becoming the administrator, so the instance can be exposed before setup has run. Set SETUP_TOKEN to choose it yourself, which an automated install wants. Once setup has completed the wizard is gone and the token is forgotten.

The wizard creates the administrator account, names the instance, picks the accent colour it is branded with, and optionally creates maven-releases, maven-snapshots and npm-hosted to start from. The schema is applied on startup, so there is no separate migration step.

Configuration

Every flag has an environment variable, so the binary is equally happy under systemd or in a container.

Flag	Environment	Default	Purpose
--port	PORT	8080	port to listen on
--db	DATABASE_PATH	./data/arca.db	SQLite database file
--storage	STORAGE_DIR	./data/storage	directory holding uploaded artifacts
--max-upload	MAX_UPLOAD_BYTES	256 MiB	largest artifact accepted
--proxy-timeout	PROXY_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	60	how long a proxy waits for its upstream
--base-url	BASE_URL	derived per request	public URL of this server, such as https://artifacts.example.com
--setup-token	SETUP_TOKEN	generated and logged	token the first-run wizard asks for
--dev	DEV_MODE	false	proxy the UI to a vite dev server
--vite-url	VITE_URL	http://localhost:5173	vite dev server to proxy

Everything else is configured through the UI and stored in the database.

What lives where

Two paths hold all the state, and neither is touched by an upgrade:

• --storage holds the artifact bytes, laid out by repository and coordinates.
• --db holds the SQLite database, and next to it the -wal and -shm files SQLite manages.

Backing up an instance means copying those two. Stop the process first, or use sqlite3 .backup so the database is copied consistently.

Developing

make dev        # vite on :5173, which starts the Go server on :8080 in dev mode
make test       # go tests plus a frontend typecheck

make dev runs vite, and vite spawns go run ./cmd/arca --dev. Vite proxies /api and /repository to the Go server, and the Go server proxies everything else back to vite, so either port serves a working app with hot reload.

In production the same routes come from one process: the frontend package embeds dist with go:embed and falls back to index.html for client side routes.