Installation

Pre-requisites

The platform is designed to be accessible with minimal setup. The only essential requirement is that your operating system should be Microsoft Windows 10 or 11. For an enhanced experience, we strongly recommend installing the following applications:

• Google Chrome (chrome): Or any other chromium based web browser. Using other browsers such as firefox from Mozilla is not tested. In our testing, using chrome resulted in a better overall experience.

• Visual Studio Code (vscode): Or any other Integrated Development Environment (IDE). We recommend vscode due to its simplicity and wide range of useful features, such as code-completion, linters, formatters and many others.

• Github (github): For app developers, we recommend using git to version control your applications locally, and then github for hosting your code and collaborate with others.

Installing the Compute Engine

The Compute Engine is a key component of the compute.build Platform, as it's necessary to run applications. We'll go into more detail in the next section, for now let's see how to install the Engine in your machine.

First, open the compute.build web platform:

If you haven't logged in already, please do so by clicking on the Login button in the top-right of the page. You should be prompted to log in using your Microsoft credentials:

After your profile finishes loading, move your mouse over the red icon at the top of the page and click on Download Compute Engine to initiate the download:

You should be prompted to download a file named compute_build_engine_installer-x64.appinstaller in your machine. After the download finishes, double-click on the downloaded file and then Install to install the Compute Engine in your machine. After the installation is complete, you should be presented with the following screen:

Click on Launch to launch the Compute Engine. It might take a bit longer to launch for the first time, but after a few seconds the Compute Engine main window should pop-up:

If this windows doesn't pop-up, check if the Compute Engine is minimized in your task bar. Please note that the Engine will have updates from time to time. When this happens, you'll be prompted to update the application when you first launch it, and will update the Engine automatically for you.

Connecting with the Compute Engine

Finally, go back to Compute's web platform and connect it with the Compute Engine by clicking on the Re-connect button:

If the connection is successful, the red icon should turn blue and the Compute Engine will show a message saying that you've been successfully authenticated.

Installation Complete

Success! You are now ready to start using the platform! Feel free to open the App Library and explore the apps that you have been subscribed to.

Follow the next section to quick start a new Collection and jump-start your journey of building apps on the Compute.