Rancher Desktop is an open-source project to bring Kubernetes and container management to the desktop. Windows and macOS versions of Rancher Desktop are available for download.

Rancher Desktop provides the following features in the form of a desktop application:

• The version of Kubernetes you choose
• Ability to test upgrading Kubernetes to a new version and see how your workloads respond
• Run containers, and build, push, and pull images (powered by nerdctl)
• Expose an application in Kubernetes for local access

All of this is wrapped in an open-source application.

You can download the application for macOS and Windows on the releases page.

Running on Windows requires Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This will be installed automatically during Rancher Desktop installation.

Note, development builds are available from the CI system. Development builds are not signed.

Rancher Desktop is an Electron application with the primary business logic written in TypeScript and JavaScript. It leverages several other pieces of technology to provide the platform elements which include k3s, kubectl, nerdctl WSL, qemu, and more. The application wraps numerous pieces of technology to provide one cohesive application.

Rancher can be built from source on macOS or Windows. Cross-compilation is currently not supported. The following provides some detail on building.

Rancher Desktop is an Electron and Node.js application. Node.js v14 needs to be installed to build the source. On Windows, Go is also required.

There are two options for building from source on Windows: with a Development VM Setup or Manual Development Environment Setup with an existing Windows installation.

1. Download a Microsoft Windows 10 development virtual machine.
2. Open a privileged PowerShell prompt (hit Windows Key + X and open Windows PowerShell (Admin)).
3. Run the automated setup script:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
   
   iwr -useb 'https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/raw/main/scripts/windows-setup.ps1' | iex

4. Close the privileged PowerShell prompt.

You are now ready to clone the repository and run npm install.

1. Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on your machine.
2. Install Scoop via iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex
3. Install git, go, nvm, and unzip via scoop install git go nvm unzip
4. Install NodeJS via nvm install 14.17.0

• Remember to use it by running nvm use 14.17.0

Use the following commands. The former is needed the first time or after an update is pulled from upstream. The latter is needed for follow-up starts.

npm install
npm run dev

To build the distributable (application bundle on macOS, installer on Windows), run npm run build.

Use the following commands to run unit tests and e2e tests.

npm test
npm run test:e2e