Installation

You need rustup and a recent nightly. Jackdaw currently targets the toolchain pinned at the top of .github/workflows/ci.yaml (as of writing, nightly-2026-03-05). Anything close to that should work, but if you hit weird type-system errors, set:

rustup install nightly-2026-03-05
rustup default nightly-2026-03-05

Linux system deps

You’ll want the same packages bevy needs:

sudo apt install libasound2-dev libudev-dev libwayland-dev

Adjust for your package manager on other distros. macOS and Windows don’t need anything extra.

Install jackdaw

cargo install jackdaw once 0.4 ships on crates.io. Until then, build from source:

cargo install --git https://github.com/jbuehler23/jackdaw

The launcher will open. From there:

1. Click + New Game.
2. Pick a name and a folder. The default template is Game (static), which is the recommended path.
3. The launcher scaffolds the project, builds a per-project editor binary, and opens it. The first build pulls all of bevy and takes a few minutes. Subsequent opens are fast.

Sanity check

Once the editor is open:

1. Right-click in the outliner. Add > Cube. A brush appears in the viewport.
2. File > Save. A file shows up at assets/scene.jsn.
3. cargo run from the project folder. The standalone binary loads the same scene, no editor.

If those three steps work, you’re good. If they don’t, file an issue with what you tried and the error you saw. There’s a Giving Feedback page with more detail.