Installation

Requirements

The Ferro CLI installs toolchain-free via Homebrew (below). The following are only needed to build and run a scaffolded app:

  • Rust 1.88+ (with Cargo) — to build the app (no OpenSSL needed; the scaffold uses rustls)
  • Node.js 18+ (for the frontend dev server)
  • PostgreSQL, SQLite, or MySQL — SQLite is the default, no setup required

Installing the CLI

Homebrew (macOS and Linux — recommended)

No Rust toolchain required:

brew install albertogferrario/ferro/ferro

curl installer (macOS and Linux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/albertogferrario/ferro/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Cargo (requires Rust)

cargo install ferro-cli

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/albertogferrario/ferro.git
cd ferro
cargo install --path ferro-cli

Creating a New Project

ferro new my-app

This will:

  1. Create a new directory my-app
  2. Initialize a Rust workspace
  3. Set up the frontend with React and TypeScript
  4. Configure the database
  5. Initialize git repository

Options

# Skip interactive prompts
ferro new my-app --no-interaction

# Skip git initialization
ferro new my-app --no-git

Starting Development

cd my-app
ferro serve

This starts both the backend (port 8080) and frontend (port 5173) servers.

Server Options

# Custom ports
ferro serve --port 3000 --frontend-port 3001

# Backend only
ferro serve --backend-only

# Frontend only
ferro serve --frontend-only

# Skip TypeScript generation
ferro serve --skip-types

AI Development Setup

For AI-assisted development with Claude, Cursor, or VS Code:

ferro boost:install

This configures the MCP server and adds project guidelines for your editor.

Next Steps