Forkana

April 28, 2026 · View on GitHub

Getting started

Prerequisites

Go 1.25. See https://go.dev/doc/manage-install
node
pnpm

Installation

Add custom/conf/app.ini. See details below for file content. Make sure to properly set WORK_PATH.

WORK_PATH = /path/to/forkana ; the only line which needs modification

APP_NAME = Forkana

[server]
PROTOCOL = http
DOMAIN = localhost
HTTP_PORT = 3000
ROOT_URL = http://localhost:3000/
RUN_MODE = dev
; LANDING_PAGE = explore

[database]
DB_TYPE = sqlite3
PATH = data/gitea.db

[security]
INSTALL_LOCK = true
SECRET_KEY = changeme
INTERNAL_TOKEN = eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJuYmYiOjE3NTY3NDU2NjZ9.luRdwGyyCdO0dyjghYinzVgC7Uu8JXTlst2HkrjE80k

[oauth2]
JWT_SECRET = 9l225INhfQSZkuiCA1bu3rDvR3TDf6DckPy0m3qAGmE

[ui]
DEFAULT_THEME = gitea-light
EXPLORE_PAGING_DEFAULT_SORT = alphabetically

Then run

$ pnpm install

To build the project:

$ TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

For troubleshooting, see the details below:

Note that it might be necessary, depending on your system's configuration, to prepend a GO specification (indicating the name of the executable, if different from just go).

$ GO=go1.25.2 TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

Also, in some situations, one might encounter a network connectivity issue with IPv6. The Go proxy is trying to connect over IPv6 and failing with "socket is not connected" errors. The solution is to modify the command by prefixing two additional vars:

$ GODEBUG="netdns=go+4" GOPROXY="direct" TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

Do the same for the following make watch command.

Starting the application for development

To run the project:

$ TAGS="sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make watch

Note that you need to build once in any case, before running continuously with watch.

Finally, visit http://localhost:3000 and you are ready to go to fork with Forkana!

Note that the expectation is that you see the landing page of Forkana, not the database setup dialog of Gitea. If you see it, something went wrong. Using sqlite should prevent precisely this during initial setup.

Populate

Forkana includes tools to automatically populate your instance with content. For more information, see the details below:

Configuration

Prior to running this command, make sure you have created an API token for your user. See the API token configuration guide for instructions.

The make populate command accepts the following environment variables:

GITEA_URL (required) - Your Forkana instance URL
GITEA_TOKEN (required) - API token with repository creation permissions
ARTICLE_COUNT (optional, default: 50) - Number of articles to fetch
CATEGORY (optional) - Wikipedia category to fetch from (e.g., "Category:Physics")
PRIVATE (optional, default: false) - Set to "true" to create private repositories

To populate your Forkana instance with 50 random Wikipedia articles:

GITEA_URL=http://localhost:3000 GITEA_TOKEN=your_api_token make populate

Detailed Documentation

For more information about the individual tools:

wiki2md - Fetch and convert Wikipedia articles to Markdown
article-creator - Create Forkana repositories from Markdown files

Clean up

To clean up

$ make clean-all
$ rm -rf data # to remove the sqlite database

Run tests

Run e2e tests

$ make test-e2e-sqlite

Run all sqlite tests:

$ make test-sqlite

Run all pgsql tests:

$ TEST_MINIO_ENDPOINT=localhost:9000 TEST_PGSQL_HOST=localhost:5432 TEST_PGSQL_DBNAME=test TEST_PGSQL_USERNAME=postgres TEST_PGSQL_PASSWORD=postgres make test-pgsql

Requires Docker containers gitea-pgsql and gitea-minio running.

$ docker run -d --name gitea-pgsql -e POSTGRES_DB=test -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -p 5432:5432 postgres:14
$ docker run -d --name gitea-minio -e MINIO_ROOT_USER=123456 -e MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=12345678 -p 9000:9000 bitnamilegacy/minio:2023.8.31

Run a single psql test (see details):

$ TEST_MINIO_ENDPOINT=localhost:9000 TEST_PGSQL_HOST=localhost:5432 TEST_PGSQL_DBNAME=test TEST_PGSQL_USERNAME=postgres TEST_PGSQL_PASSWORD=postgres make test-pgsql#TestJobWithNeeds

Deployment

For deploying Forkana to a server for private preview, see the Deployment Guide.

Gitea

Forkana is forked from go-gitea/gitea.