Before You Begin

This installation runs the whole CEDAR application on one computer. A development laptop can do that comfortably, but Docker needs enough room for several databases and Java services to remain running together. Give Docker Desktop at least 16 GB of memory and make sure it has at least 40 GB of free disk space. Half of the host's CPU cores is a reasonable starting point. If you configure the terminology service to use a large local catalog instead of BioPortal, allocate 32 GB of memory; the ordinary installation in this guide uses BioPortal.

The current setup has been verified on an Apple Silicon Mac. A recent Docker Desktop release with Compose v2 is the practical requirement. Other Docker Desktop platforms may work, but the complete installation has not recently been exercised on them.

You will also need Git, Python 3, and OpenSSL. Git retrieves the core Docker repositories, Python runs the CEDAR command-line helper, and OpenSSL creates certificates that your browser can trust. The installation downloads orchestration code from GitHub and the verified CEDAR image train from Nexus, so it needs normal internet access during the initial setup and first start.

You do not need a Java development environment for the normal Docker path. JDK 17 and the complete Java source tree matter only if you deliberately choose to rebuild the backend from source.

Finally, make sure another CEDAR installation is not already running. Native CEDAR and Docker CEDAR both use the same local web and database ports. If you have used the native development stack, stop it before continuing.

CEDAR will use local addresses ending in metadatacenter.orgx—the final x is intentional. A setup command later in the guide adds those names to your hosts file; there is no public DNS or external deployment involved.