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Installation

Beta

Harnice is currently in beta. We do not guarantee backwards compatibility with your project files, libraries, or build instructions when you update. Prefer git (or another VCS) so you can roll back if a release changes formats.

Buy and activate

Harnice is sold as a subscription at $50 per seat per month. One seat = one activated machine. Increase quantity at checkout for more seats. If you believe you have a special case for a pricing exception, send me an email. I would love to hear about your project and help the world never design harnesses ever again, especially if you're not using the app to make money.

  1. Buy a license (Stripe Checkout).
  2. Check the email you used at checkout for your license key (sent by Keyforge after payment).
  3. Download Harnice (links below), install, and open it.
  4. Paste the key on the activation screen. Activation needs the internet once; afterward this machine can work offline for a long stretch (see below).

To free a seat for another computer, open the gear menu (bottom right) → Release seat….

Offline use

Harnice is a fully offline app. Your projects live as ordinary files on disk. It is intended to be used with git (or any VCS you prefer): you version-control your own design files in your own way — Harnice does not host your data or require a cloud workspace.

Prove it to yourself: turn on airplane mode and build a project. Design, edit, and compile still work.

The only routine need for internet is an occasional license check-in. After activation (or a successful refresh), Harnice verifies a signed license token on the machine and does not phone home on every launch:

Period Behavior
About 30 days after the last successful activate/refresh Fully offline; no network required
Last ~3 days of that window If the machine is online, Harnice quietly refreshes the token and resets the clock
14 more days after the token expires Offline grace — still allowed if you have not reconnected yet
After that (~44 days total with no refresh) Needs internet to refresh or re-activate

Coming online every few weeks is enough to keep the license current indefinitely. You also need the internet for first activation, seat release, and after a cancelled or unpaid subscription once the cached token and grace period end.

Download

Download Harnice for Mac or Windows. On a Mac, open the DMG and drag Harnice into Applications. On Windows, unzip and run Harnice.exe (keep the unzipped folder together). Avoid extracting into a filepath with spaces.

Open Harnice. On first launch it creates the files it needs on this computer (your name and library locations) and opens the setup checklist: your name, git, Inkscape, and the standard libraries. You can open that list again from the gear menu → Help setting up git, Inkscape, and libraries. Inkscape is only needed to export drawing pages to PDF.

Inkscape

PDF drawings are SVG pages that Harnice exports with Inkscape. The rest of the app works without it. The setup checklist looks for Inkscape and saves the path it finds. Check runs that search again.

Harnice looks in this order:

  1. A path already saved in paths/paths.json on this computer
  2. inkscape on PATH
  3. The usual install locations:
    • Mac app: /Applications/Inkscape.app and ~/Applications/Inkscape.app
    • Homebrew: /opt/homebrew/bin/inkscape and /usr/local/bin/inkscape
    • Windows: C:\Program Files\Inkscape\bin\inkscape.com, the same folder under C:\Program Files (x86), and a per-user install at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Inkscape\bin

Harnice opened from the Dock or the Start menu has a short PATH. A folder that works in your terminal is invisible to the app unless it is one of the locations above, or you save the path as described below.

If nothing is found, the checklist item stays open and links here. Waive skips the item for now. A later PDF export still stops until Inkscape is found, and tells you to install it.

Installed in another folder

Create paths/paths.json and set inkscape to the executable. Harnice reads that file before it searches anywhere else.

How you run Harnice File
Installed Mac app ~/Library/Application Support/Harnice/paths/paths.json
Installed Windows app %APPDATA%\Harnice\paths\paths.json
Source checkout paths/paths.json in the repository root 
{
  "inkscape": "/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS/inkscape"
}

On Windows, use the full path to inkscape.com or inkscape.exe. In JSON, write backslashes twice:

{
  "inkscape": "C:\\Program Files\\Inkscape\\bin\\inkscape.com"
}

Open the checklist and click Check, or build a drawing. Harnice keeps that path for the next build. If the file is missing or the path no longer exists, the search above runs again.

Command line

To install the harnice command and build from a terminal, see Harnice command line.

Open or create a project

Use File → Open Project… or File → New Project… (same as the buttons in the console), or click those buttons in the left panel. Window → New Window opens another Harnice window with its own Python process so you can work on a different project at the same time.

Configure Library Paths

Harnice finds libraries through Library locations (in the left panel). Each row maps a repository URL (the lib_repo you write in build instructions) to the local path of that library on your machine:

repo_url,local_path
https://github.com/harnice/harnice-aerospace-library,/path/to/harnice-aerospace-library
https://github.com/harnice/harnice-av-library,/path/to/harnice-av-library
  • local_path may use ~ (it is expanded)
  • Add one row for every library you use. Connector choosers (D38999, Mighty Mouse, D-sub) look up https://github.com/harnice/harnice-aerospace-library with library_utils.get_local_path()
  • The URL must match exactly what you pass as lib_repo (lookup is case-insensitive)

If fileio.path("repository locations") is missing the first time you run Harnice, it is created for you.

See Libraries for more.