Installation

OpenCATS can be installed from a release archive, from source with Composer, or in the repository Docker environment for development and testing.

Choose an installation path

• Linux/Unix production-style install: use the Ubuntu installation guide as the primary documented path.

• Windows/WAMP/XAMPP install: use the Windows guide. OpenCATS is known to be deployed on Windows, but the project builds and tests only in a Linux/Unix CI environment.

• Docker: use the Docker guide for development and testing. Some experienced users deploy Docker in production, but the repository Docker setup is not the recommended production configuration without hardening.

• Existing installation upgrade: read Backup, Restore, and Upgrade before changing files or database schema.

Baseline requirements

OpenCATS 0.10.0 is built and tested with PHP 7.4 and MariaDB 10.7. Install required PHP extensions, create a MariaDB database and user, and ensure OpenCATS writable directories are owned by the web server user.

If you use a source checkout or source archive instead of a prepared release archive, install dependencies with:

composer install --no-dev

After files, database, and permissions are ready, continue to Run the Installer.