Can we use serena if we just package it?

[jinzhongjia]

https://github.com/oraios/serena

I've checked its documentation, it's a bit difficult to use and needs to be cloned manually locally.

Can we use it directly in an easier way

[ravitemer]

@jinzhongjia Unfortunately no, it's up to the server to make the setup process seamless. However, I tried to install it and followed these steps.

Note: My home dir is /home/ubuntu/.

1. Cloned the repo to /home/ubuntu/serena
2. cd /home/ubuntu/serena
3. cp serena_config.template.yml serena_config.yml
4. Set web_dashboard = False in the serena_config.yml. This was needed as the server went on logging forever without completing the startup.
5. Press A in the hub UI and paste this there

{
  "serena": {
    "command": "uv",
     "args": [
      "run",
      "--directory",
      "/home/ubuntu/serena",
      "serena-mcp-server"
    ]
  }
}

6. You can see it installing dependencies etc in the Logs view and it should start the server soon. If it doesn't try toggling it off and on.

[betaboon]

fyi, as of a couple of days ago this works:

{
  "github.com/oraios/serena": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "--from",
      "git+https://github.com/oraios/serena",
      "serena-mcp-server"
    ]
  }
}

[jinzhongjia]

Thank you for your help, I will try it. Currently, it is very good to see the reamde description of this mcp server.

[ravitemer]

Yeah, although the server's README says it will auto create a .serena/project.yml file in a project repo, it didn't in my case and I had to copy paste the project.yml from the actual serena repo and change the language.