Server setup

Turn the finished world into a running Minecraft server without leaving Meld. The Server setup card builds a complete Leaf (Paper-fork) server around your world — jar, configs, plugins, the world copy — in five explicit, confirmed steps, and then runs it with a live console in the app.

What it is

Meld already exports server-grade worlds (raw .mca, Linear, B_Linear). Server setup closes the last gap: everything between "I have a world folder" and "my friends are walking around in it". It picks a Leaf build, writes correct configs for your exact world format, downloads and verifies every file, and manages the server process — start, stop, console, crash recovery — from the same UI you built the world in.

Nothing downloads and nothing runs without an explicit confirmation, and accepting Mojang's EULA is always its own deliberate step.

The five steps

1. Plan. A dry run. Meld resolves the newest build of your chosen Leaf version (any version Leaf publishes, 1.21.4 to latest, fetched live) and the exact version of every plugin, and shows you the full list — file names, versions, hashes, which Java it found, which world folder it will use — before anything is fetched.
2. Stage. Creates the server folder (yours to choose; default is inside the project) with server.properties, the Leaf config carrying the right region-format, start scripts with tuned JVM flags, an eula.txt stub set to false, and a copy of the world. Your original world is never touched.
3. Download. Fetches the reviewed jar and plugins. Every file is hash-verified (sha256 from the Leaf API, sha512 from Modrinth) before it is used; a mismatch is discarded.
4. Accept EULA. Its own step, its own dialog. Meld writes eula=true only after you explicitly accept.
5. Start. Launches the server on localhost:25565 with a live console tail and a command input right in the card. Stop saves the world cleanly.

The world can mount as the server's main world or as a Multiverse sub-world — in sub-world mode Meld installs Multiverse-Core and imports the world on first start via the plugin's own /mv import, typed into the server console it owns.

World files & region formats

Leaf can store worlds in three region formats, and Meld's export can produce all three. The card lets you pick which files feed the server — and the server config always matches:

Pick Auto and Meld follows your Export & compression settings. Pick one explicitly and Meld validates the files exist before staging. Either way the world folder and the region-format are decided together, so the server can never be configured for a format it does not have.

Borders, pre-staged

If the project has Border & zones exports, the server gets them automatically: WorldGuard, WorldEdit, Skript and the required addons (skWorldGuard for region events, SkBee for the particle walls) are part of the standard install, and on first start Meld copies regions.yml and border.sk into the live plugin folders and reloads them over the console. Join the server and the border — titles, kill-zone, fling-back wall, and the dust-curtain particle walls — is already running.

Voxy: the whole map on join

Tick the Voxy server-side option and Meld installs the vss plugin plus a tuned config. Players running the Voxy client mod then see the entire map as distant LOD terrain the moment they join — no exploring required; the server streams it straight from the world files. It works with all three region formats (it requests chunks through the server itself, never parsing region files), and it is version-strict: the plugin exists only for some MC versions and clients must match the server version. Plan tells you plainly if your chosen version has no build.

Backups & watchdog

• Backups. The first Start can automatically zip the staged world to backups/ before launching (a per-project toggle — big worlds make big zips, since region data barely recompresses), and a manual backup button covers any later point (with the server stopped). Your project's master world always remains the untouched source.
• Crash watchdog. If the java process dies without you pressing Stop, Meld restarts it — at most three times in ten minutes, then it stops trying and points you at the console log.
• Server profile. Version, mount mode, world files choice, folder, RAM/CPU and extras persist per project, so re-staging after a world rebuild is one click through the same steps.

Localhost by design

Meld sets every server up for 127.0.0.1:25565, offline mode — a private local server, and that is the whole scope. Meld never opens ports, never flips online-mode, never edits reachability. If you later take the server public, that is your own edit in server.properties (the generated file says exactly that in its header), on your own network terms.

Requirements

• Java. Leaf 26.x needs Java 25; 1.21.x needs Java 21. Meld probes your PATH and known launcher locations (for example the Modrinth App's bundled runtimes) and tells you what it found in Plan. Meld never downloads a Java runtime itself.
• Disk. Staging copies the world; Meld preflights free space first.
• Network. Plan and Download talk to api.leafmc.one and Modrinth; everything else is local.