Radicle on Windows

Tatiana Borda — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 23:05:26 +0000

Radicle, as they say in their website, enables developers to securely collaborate on software over a peer-to-peer network built on Git. It is a decentralized control version system, designed to be free for censorship.
If you want to use Radicle but you’re a Windows user don’t panic! You can do it through WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux that lets developers run a GNU/Linux environment.

1.Install LINUX on Windows:
You must be running Windows 10 version 2004 and higher or Windows 11. You need to open your Powershell or CMD with administrator permissions and entering this command:

wsl --install

Then you have to restart your machine.

2.Install your Linux distribution of choice:
I HIGHLY recommend Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS, you can download it here:

Select “Get on the Microsoft Store”
You will be redirect to the Microsoft Store, select “Get”.
The first time you launch a newly installed Linux distribution, a console window will open and you'll be asked to wait for a minute or two for files to decompress and be stored on your PC. All future launches should take less than a second.

3. Set up the Linux distribution development environment:
At the same console set your User Name and your Password, these are specific to each separate Linux distribution that you install and have no bearing on your Windows user name. Please note that whilst entering the Password, nothing will appear on screen. This is called blind typing. You won't see what you are typing, this is completely normal.
Once you create a User Name and Password, the account will be your default user.

4. Install Git and Config
You can check your git version with the following command:

git --version

Make sure you are using Git 2.34.0 or later. If you haven’t already downloaded Git you have to do it for Windows too!
For the latest stable Git version in Ubuntu/Debian, enter the command:

sudo apt-get install git

To set up your Git config file, open a command line for the distribution you're working in and set your name with this command (replacing "Your Name" with your preferred username):

git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Then set your email with this command (replacing "youremail@domain.com" with the email you prefer):

git config --global user.email "youremail@domain.com"

5.Create ssh-keys:

To generate your ssh keys, write this command:

ssh-keygen

You will see the next output:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/your_home/.ssh/id_rsa):
press ENTER to save the keys, then you will see:
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

It is recommended to have a passphrase. If everything it’s fine you could see something like this on your console:

Your identification has been saved in /your_home/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /your_home/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:/hk7MJ5n5aiqdfTVUZr+2Qt+qCiS7BIm5Iv0dxrc3ks user@host
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 3072]----+
|                .|
|               + |
|              +  |
| .           o . |
|o       S   . o  |
| + o. .oo. ..  .o|
|o = oooooEo+ ...o|
|.. o *o+=.*+o....|
|    =+=ooB=o.... |
+----[SHA256]-----+

6.Install Radicle CLI:
As you can read on Radicle GitHub we will follow the steps for ubuntu: https://github.com/radicle-dev/radicle-cli
First, download the package signing key:

curl -fsSL https://europe-west6-apt.pkg.dev/doc/repo-signing-key.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/radicle-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null

Then update your sources list with the radicle repository by creating a registry file:

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/radicle-archive-keyring.gpg] https://europe-west6-apt.pkg.dev/projects/radicle-services radicle-cli main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/radicle-registry.list

Then update the package list and install radicle-cli:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install radicle-cli

You’ll have to create a username and a passphrase too.

7.Add your radicle key to ssh-agent:
Before you start using Radicle I recommend adding your ssh-agent, with this you will avoid future problems. Run the following command:

eval "$(ssh-agent)"

Then you’ll can link your Radicle account by running:

rad auth

It will require your passphrase and it will add your Radicle key to ssh-agent.

8.Create a new repo:
Follow the next commands to test Radicle:

rad auth —-init

git init test-project

cd test-project

echo "test project" > README

git add README

git commit -a -m 'initial commit'

rad init .

rad push

You can choose any node to host your code.
And if everything’s fine, now your code is hosted on Radicle! 🎉 You should see where you can see your hosted code.

DEV Community: Tatiana Borda

Radicle on Windows