MSYS2 is a POSIX environment which provides extensive compiler support for the more modern programming languages used by Murfey's package dependencies.
The Murfey server supports the forwarding of download requests to network-restricted client PCs. To install MSYS2, download the setup executable using this mirror, then run it using the default settings. This will install MSYS2 to C:\msys64 .
Some versions of Windows are too old to support the default MSYS2 installer. In such cases, download this alternative executable and run it. It will unpack the msys64 folder into your Downloads folder. Copy this folder to the default MSYS2 location, and run the UCRT64 executable within it to proceed with the installation as normal.
By default, MSYS2 comes with preset lists of mirrors and servers that it installs its packages from. On a network-restricted PC, these will need to be replaced with files that point to the Murfey server instead. They can be downloaded via this link.
Once downloaded, extract the files to %MSYS64%\etc\pacman.d. If MSYS2 was installed at the default location, this will be:
C:\msys64\etc\pacman.d
MSYS2 comes with multiple environments, but UCRT64 is the most modern one. In order for the Murfey client to be able to install and run its dependencies properly, the following packages will need to be installed in the UCRT64 environment. This can be achieved using the following commands:
$ pacman -Syu $ pacman -S msys2-runtime $ pacman -S rsync $ pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-pip $ pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-rust
Other utility packages such as vim can also be installed by running pacman -S <package-name>. You can browse the other packages available on MSYS2 by searching the repo using pacman -Ss <package-name>
MSYS2 current installs Python 3.14 by default, which we have not rigorously tested Murfey with. For now, we downgrade to Python 3.12.12, which is known to work with Murfey. To do so, download the following packages:
These files will be placed in your account's Downloads folder by default, and can then be installed using the following command:
$ pacman -U /c/Users/<username>/Downloads/<package-name>
Many newer Python packages now have dependencies written in Rust that allow them to operate more efficiently. MSYS2 supports the compilation and installation of such packages, and is thus our recommended POSIX environment to use Murfey with.
Rust packages and their associated metadata are, by default, stored in https://crates.io. Package download and installation is in turn conducted by the package manager cargo. For network-restricted client PCs, Murfey also supports mirroring https://crates.io to facilitate the installation of Rust packages.
To configure cargo, simply download the pre-configured config.toml file via this link. This file should then be pasted in a .cargo folder, which, by default, should be located in your User Profile homespace:
%USERPROFILE%\.cargo
For a user named Murfey, for example, this would take the form:
C:\Users\Murfey\.cargo
With this file configured, cargo will know to look for package metadata and files via the Murfey mirror instead.
Once Python and pip are installed in the terminal, you have the option to install Murfey in either the base environment or a virtual environment. The base environment is simpler, but uninstallation of the Python packages in the future could potentially interfere with the base environment's functionality.
To set up a virtual environment, run the following commands:
$ pip install virtualenv --index-url {{ request.url.scheme }}://{{ netloc }}{{ proxy_path }}/pypi --trusted-host {{ netloc }}
$ virtualenv your-env-name # Create the virtual environment
$ source your-env-name/bin/activate # Activate the virtual environment
You can install Murfey in the Python environment (the base one or a virtual environment) in the UCRT64 terminal using the following commands:
$ pip install murfey --index-url {{ request.url.scheme }}://{{ netloc }}{{ proxy_path }}/pypi/index --trusted-host {{ netloc }}
Python's Pillow package will be needed for certain instruments. This will require the installation of additional image libraries in pacman:
$ pacman -S \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-freetype \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-giflib \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-lcms2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libpng \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libtiff \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libwebp \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openjpeg2 \
mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-zlib
Once the necessary libraries have been installed, Pillow can be installed by running the following command:
$ ZLIB_ROOT="/ucrt64" pip install pillow --index-url {{ request.url.scheme }}://{{ netloc }}{{ proxy_path }}/pypi/index --trusted-host {{ netloc }}
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