EdgeLinkd
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Getting started

Build EdgeLinkd from source, run your first flow with the built-in editor, then deploy headless.

This guide builds a release binary from source, runs it with the built-in Node-RED editor, and then shows the headless setup used in production. Prebuilt beta packages are also available on GitHub Releases.

Project status: EdgeLinkd is in beta. Interfaces and behaviour may change between beta releases.

Prerequisites

  • Rust 1.88 or later — a stable toolchain installed with rustup.
  • Git — the repository pins Node-RED as a submodule.
  • Windows only — the MSVC toolchain (Visual Studio Build Tools), and patch.exe on PATH. It ships with Git for Windows.

1. Get the source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/oldrev/edgelinkd.git
cd edgelinkd

Cloned without --recursive? Fetch the submodule afterwards:

git submodule update --init --recursive

2. Build

cargo build --release

The release profile is tuned for size: opt-level = "z", link-time optimisation, a single codegen unit and stripped symbols. The binary is written to target/release/edgelinkd.

Supported targets

Target triplePlatform
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnuLinux, x86-64
aarch64-unknown-linux-gnuLinux, 64-bit ARM
armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihfLinux, ARMv7 hard-float
armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabiLinux, ARMv7 soft-float
x86_64-pc-windows-msvcWindows, MSVC
x86_64-pc-windows-gnuWindows, MinGW

3. Run with the editor

./target/release/edgelinkd run

EdgeLinkd starts the engine and serves the Node-RED editor at http://127.0.0.1:1888. Design a flow, press Deploy, and it runs immediately on the Rust runtime — no separate Node-RED installation is involved.

To run a specific flow file:

./target/release/edgelinkd run ./flows.json

To reach the editor from another machine, bind to all interfaces:

./target/release/edgelinkd run ./flows.json --bind 0.0.0.0:1888

Expose the editor and its admin API only on networks you trust.

4. Deploy headless

On a production device the web server is usually unnecessary:

./target/release/edgelinkd run ./flows.json --headless

Headless mode runs the same flows without the editor and admin API — the smallest footprint EdgeLinkd offers.

Command-line reference

edgelinkd [OPTIONS] [COMMAND]

Commands:
  run [FLOWS_PATH]         Run the EdgeLinkd flow engine
      --headless           Do not start the web server
      --bind <ADDR>        Web interface address (default 127.0.0.1:1888)
  list                     List all available node types

Global options:
  -u, --user-dir <DIR>     Use the specified user directory
      --home <DIR>         Home directory (default ~/.edgelink)
      --env <ENV>          Running environment: dev | prod (default dev)
  -l, --log-path <FILE>    Path of the log configuration file
  -v, --verbose <N>        Verbosity; 0 is quiet (default 2)

edgelinkd --help and edgelinkd run --help print the authoritative list for your build.

Configuration file

EdgeLinkd also reads an edgelinkd.toml configuration file. Values passed on the command line override values from the file, and flows, settings and runtime data live in the user directory.

Next steps