Build Collabora Office

Mac

The following instructions depend heavily on using Homebrew, as that makes the managing the build requirements much easier. It is of course possible to avoid it, and only depend on eg. self-built libpng, etc.

Setup

• Node.js

  • Needed for building the JS parts (not needed if you build them on another linux machine)

• Install node.js

  brew install node
  

• Install poco

  brew install poco
  

• zstd

  brew install zstd
  

• for ./configure

  brew install libtool
  

• zlib

  brew install zlib
  

• libpng

  brew install libpng
  

• cppunit

  brew install cppunit
  

• install dependencies for the canvas@next

  brew install cairo
  brew install pango
  /opt/homebrew/bin/pip3 install --break-system-packages lxml
  /opt/homebrew/bin/pip3 install --break-system-packages polib
  

• install canvas to avoid error during build (complains about node-pre-gyp)

  • NB. version 3.0 needed, it upgrades the API to fit the new node.js
  • npm install canvas@next
    • It might be that you should run the above in the browser subdirectory of your online directory: (cd browser && npm install canvas@next)

• Install and/or update the Command Line Tools for Xcode:

  • xcode-select --install
  • After that you might need to update them in System Settings > General > Software Updates
    • For some reason for me it lists both 15.3 and 16.0 there. As I have Xcode 16.0, I choose just that one.

Clone the monorepo

Collabora Online and the LibreOffice core now live in a single Gerrit monorepo - core is the engine/ subdirectory of the online repo, so there is no separate core clone any more. Code review happens on Gerrit, not GitHub pull requests; see the first contribution guide for the full workflow.

For an anonymous read-only clone:

git clone https://gerrit.collaboraoffice.com/online collabora-online
cd collabora-online

If you have a Gerrit account and plan to push changes for review, clone over SSH instead:

git clone ssh://YOUR_USERNAME@gerrit.collaboraoffice.com:29418/online collabora-online
cd collabora-online

Build LO

Move into the engine/ subdirectory of the monorepo and build the main branch with the following autogen.input.

NOTE: Build with stuff installed via ‘brew’, and not via ’lode’; if you have too many things installed via ‘brew’, compilation may fail for you due to incompatible stuff.

autogen.input:

# Distro
--with-distro=CPMacOS-LOKit
--disable-mergelibs

# Overrides for the debug builds
--enable-debug
#--enable-dbgutil

--enable-werror
--enable-symbols
# If you don't want localizations
--without-lang

For dependency installation, refer to https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingOnLinux

Configure Collabora Online

Run this from the top of the monorepo (one level up from engine/):

./autogen.sh && ./configure \
--enable-macosapp \
--enable-experimental \
--with-app-name="Collabora Office" \
--with-app-package-name=com.yourpackage.name \
--with-vendor="Your Name" \
--with-poco-includes=/opt/homebrew/opt/poco/include \
--with-poco-libs=/opt/homebrew/opt/poco/lib \
--with-zstd-includes=/opt/homebrew/include \
--with-zstd-libs=/opt/homebrew/lib \
--with-libpng-includes=/opt/homebrew/include \
--with-libpng-libs=/opt/homebrew/lib \
--with-lo-path=engine/instdir/your-built-lo.app \
--with-lokit-path=engine/include

Adjust your-built-lo.app to match the app bundle name produced by your core build. Also, on Intel Macs homebrew gets installed in /usr/local, not /opt/homebrew; but you may prefer your own built versions of POCO, libpng and zstd.

Build the JavaScipt bits

Just run make from the terminal.

Build the Desktop Edition

Open the macos/coda/coda.xcodeproj project in Xcode and choose Build and Run current scheme.

That’s it!

pre-built macOS

If you just want a pre-built macOS version instead of building locally, please use the TestFlight preview build:
👉 https://testflight.apple.com/join/sbkwMzMt