Installation

Owear ships as a CLI (@owear/cli) plus a per-platform runtime package that contains the native kernel and the stock modules. This page covers both the published flow and building from a checkout while packages are not yet on npm.

Requirements

• Node.js 20+ and pnpm (or npm) for the JavaScript side.
• CMake 3.20+ and a C++20 compiler only if you build the kernel or write native modules.
• Platform libraries (only needed to build the kernel from source):

Linux

sudo apt-get install -y libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libsoup-3.0-dev \
  libssl-dev zlib1g-dev ninja-build xvfb libayatana-appindicator3-dev

Windows — MSVC (Visual Studio 2022) and vcpkg for zlib/openssl. WebView2 support is gated behind OW_WITH_WEBVIEW2 and needs the Microsoft.Web.WebView2 NuGet package under deps/webview2/.

Option A — from npm (recommended)

The @owear/* packages are published on npm (0.1.4): @owear/cli, @owear/core, @owear/vite-plugin and the per-platform runtime (@owear/linux-x64-gnu, @owear/win32-x64).

pnpm dlx @owear/cli create my-app    # or: npm i -g @owear/cli && ow create my-app
cd my-app
pnpm install
pnpm dev

The CLI resolves the kernel from the runtime package for your platform:

Option B — from a checkout (framework contributors)

git clone <owear-repo> owear
cd owear

# 1) build the kernel for your platform
pnpm install
pnpm build:native          # or: cmake --preset linux-release && cmake --build --preset linux-release

# 2) scaffold an app anywhere
node packages/cli/src/ow.js create ../my-app
cd ../my-app
pnpm install
pnpm dev

ow dev looks for the kernel in this order:

1. OW_KERNEL_BIN if set;
2. <app>/.owear/bin/owear;
3. the local monorepo build (build/<preset>/src/owear);
4. the installed runtime package.

If it cannot find a kernel and source is available, ow dev compiles it the first time. Otherwise it stops with instructions.

Verifying the install

ow --help            # prints commands
ow api list          # shows framework APIs (only inside the Owear repo)

Inside a project:

pnpm dev             # opens a window with your app

Next steps

• Quick start — create and run your first app.
• Project structure — what the generated files do.