Installing Forge

Go to the Forge download page to download Forge.

Installing on Windows

Forge is deployed using a ClickOnce installer. You can download and install the application without requiring administrator permissions (except .NET, see below). The application automatically detects and installs updates when you start the application. After installation of a new release, you will receive automatic update notifications when you start the application.

Forge is built with the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2, .NET 8 and WPF. The ClickOnce installer will download and install the .NET Framework 4.7.2 if necessary. Forge itself will download and install .NET 8 if necessary.

Attention

Installing or updating the .NET Framework or .NET 8 requires administrator permissions. If you have insufficient permissions, please contact your system administrator.

Installing on other operating systems

The .NET Framework and WPF are only supported on the Windows operating system. For users using other platforms, generally the best solution is to run Windows in a Virtual Machine, on your own machine or in the cloud, and install Forge on that. Which virtualization software you can use depends on your hardware:

  • Mac with Apple silicon (M1 and newer): you need Windows 11 for ARM. Parallels Desktop is the Microsoft-authorized solution and downloads and installs Windows 11 for you (commercial, free trial). UTM is a free alternative; see their Windows guide.

  • Mac with Intel processor, Linux or Windows host: VirtualBox is a great, free option. Note that VirtualBox does not support Macs with Apple silicon.

Forge runs in these virtual machines like it does on a physical Windows machine. Give the virtual machine enough memory and disk space to install .NET and your FHIR packages.

Resolving installation Security Warning

In some cases users find that when installing or updating Forge the following security warning appears:

_images/ForgeInstallSecurityWarning.png

If this is the case for you, please follow the steps listed in this blog post to change the values of TrustManager in the registry with Registry Editor. After that the installation should allow you to continue.

If you’re not allowed to change the registry of your computer, please ask your administrator for help.

Installing behind a proxy

Users installing and using Forge behind a Proxy can run into issues. Your organizations administrator might be able to resolve this issue by doing the following:

  1. Whitelisting the following IP addresses:

    simplifier.net              IP 40.68.205.178
downloads.simplifier.net    IP 40.114.243.70

  2. Allow applications using port 443 (https)

  3. Your administrator should allow your Proxy to support Websocket.

Additionally some users found that they had to do one extra switch to the local users’ IE proxy settings. Although “Bypass proxy server for local addresses” was checked, entering the IP address and/or domain name (whichever the local users are using) into the proxy exceptions list fixed the problem.