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Good to know#

• One binary. Helena is a single self-contained binary: no installer and no runtime to set up. Download it, make it executable and run it. On Linux, each release also attaches .deb and .rpm packages (the binary plus a desktop entry and icon) if you would rather install through your package manager.
• macOS builds are unsigned, for two mundane reasons: there is no paid Apple Developer account, and no Mac to notarize on. The binaries are still built and tested in CI; allow them past Gatekeeper with right-click → Open. If you would like to sponsor code signing and notarization, or a Mac to do it on, that is very welcome. More detail in packaging.
• Colour emoji. Release builds leave out Fyne's bundled colour-emoji font to cut resident memory (about 75 MB), so colour emoji in response bodies render as blank glyphs. All other text is unaffected. Build from source without -tags no_emoji if you want colour emoji.
• Updates. Helena never checks for updates on its own (part of its no-background-traffic guarantee); the only check is the one you start with Check for updates in the status bar. Update by downloading a new release, through the Microsoft Store, or with a package manager as those land. helena --version shows your build.

Build from source#

Building Helena yourself is free, forever, on every platform. The quick version is below; the full guide (per-distribution dependencies, release build flags, cross-architecture notes and troubleshooting) is in the build guide.

You need:

• Go 1.26 or newer (the toolchain is pinned in go.mod).
• A C compiler: Fyne uses cgo and OpenGL.
• On Linux: sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libgl1-mesa-dev xorg-dev libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev. The Wayland headers are needed since Fyne 2.8 builds that backend by default; add -tags x11 to build for X11 only without them.
• On Windows: TDM-GCC or MSYS2 mingw-w64 on PATH.
• On macOS: the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).

On Linux, macOS or WSL:

git clone https://github.com/ideaconnect/helena
cd helena
make build   # → ./bin/helena   (or: go build -o helena ./cmd/helena)
make run     # build and run
make test    # run all tests

On Windows (Cmd or PowerShell):

make.bat build   :: writes bin\helena.exe
make.bat run

A local go build reports version dev; released binaries report their tag and commit. For bug reports, helena --verbose raises the log level and --log-file PATH copies the log to a file. Credentials are redacted, so logs are safe to attach.

Next steps#

• Getting started: your first request.
• Features: what is in the box.
• Examples: representative workflows.