I probably won't do any more testing since I now have a working forge distribution.
The lesson for others reading this post is - if you see this same problem install the
"no addons" zip version and then run "forge --install core"
George .... does that produce the same result as if the "offline zip" file had
worked ok ?
Posted by forums
Original post:
https://community.jboss.org/message/863933#863933