About 3 min

Installing Pulsar

To get started with Pulsar, we'll need to get it on your system. This section will go over installing Pulsar on your system, as well as the basics of how to build it from source.

Installing Pulsar should be fairly simple. Generally, you can go to pulsar-edit.devopen in new window and you should see a download button.

Simply select your operating system (if not opened automatically) and architecture (where necessary) and choose the type of download you require.

The button or buttons should be specific to your platform, and the download package should be easily installable. However, let's go over them here in a bit of detail.

Updating Pulsar

You should consider updating Pulsar periodically for the latest improvements to the software. Additionally, When Pulsar receives hotfixes for security vulnerabilities you will want to update your version of Pulsar as soon as possible.

Currently Pulsar does not support automatic updates. What this means is that new versions will have to be obtained via the Pulsar Downloads here on our website. This is something on our roadmap to change as soon as possible.

If you have installed Pulsar via a package manager then you should use the instructions provided by that package manager for updating your installation.

Portable Mode

Pulsar stores configuration and state in a .pulsar directory usually located in your home directory (%userprofile% on Windows). You can however run Pulsar in portable mode where both the app and the configuration are stored together such as on a removable storage device.

To setup Pulsar in portable mode download the relevant package and extract it to your removable storage.

Portable Notes

  • The .pulsar directory must be writeable
  • You can move an existing .pulsar directory to your portable device
  • Pulsar can also store its Electron user data in your .pulsar directory - just create a subdirectory called electronUserData inside .pulsar
  • Alternatively you can set the ATOM_HOME environment variable to point wherever you want (you can write a .sh or .cmd script to temporarily set it and launch it from that)
  • Portable mode installations will not automatically update

Building Pulsar from Source

The Hacking the Core section of the launch manual covers instructions on how to clone and build the source code if you prefer that option.

Proxy and Firewall Settings

Behind a Firewall?

If you are behind a firewall and seeing SSL errors when installing packages you can disable strict SSL by running:

$ pulsar -p config set strict-ssl false

Using a Proxy?

If you are using a HTTP(S) proxy you can configure ppm to use it by running:

$ pulsar -p config set https-proxy <YOUR_PROXY_ADDRESS>

You can run pulsar -p config get https-proxy to verify it has been set correctly.