Build Collabora Online

Are you interested in contributing but don’t know where to start? Head over documentation or start by following these step-by-step instructions and build CODE from scratch.

Choose your operating system or opt for using Gitpod (hack, build, debug and run entirely using a web-browser) from the list below for straightforward instructions to get you going quickly. If you are a seasoned developer with commit access, or just feeling extraordinarily brave, feel free to follow the general instructions.

GNU/Linux openSUSE GNU/Linux Ubuntu GNU/Linux Fedora GNU/Linux Arch (Manjaro etc.) GNU/Linux General Instructions Gitpod (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc)

Build CODE on Gitpod

On top of our daily LibreOffice core archives, we have also added integration support for Gitpod, a cloud based development environment. Now you can start hacking Collabora Online (COOL) in under ~5 minutes!

Steps to quick start:

  • Sign-up on Gitpod.io with your GitHub account
  • Install the proper extension for your browser
  • Go to COOL repo
  • Click on the green Gitpod button near the top of the GitHub repo page

GitPod green button on GitHub

  • Wait for a few minutes, and you will have a full development environment with COOL already cloned & built, ready-to-start/develop
Gitpod, your development environment for Collabora Online on the cloud
  • Don’t forget to fork the main repo |226x56
  • And set the remote address in .git/config to point to your fork’s address with this command:
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/PUT-YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME-HERE/online.git

Happy hacking! : )

First published on Collabora Online Community Roundup #2

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

Build CODE on openSUSE

The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on openSUSE Leap 15.3. You might need to do small adjustments for other releases.

Dependencies

We need LibreOffice core, POCO library and several other libraries and tools to build CODE. Open a terminal and follow the steps below.

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/c_c++/openSUSE_Leap_15.3/devel:libraries:c_c++.repo

zypper in poco-devel libcap-progs python3-polib libcap-devel npm libtool cppunit-devel pam-devel python3-lxml

LibreOffice

CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and brings in extra complexity. So, we will instead download a daily built archive which contains only the pieces that are absolutely necessary. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, then this will be enough for you. Otherwise, refer to the general instructions.

Now download a daily-built archive of LibreOffice core:

wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Extract the contents of the archive:

tar xvf core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Mark the location of the extracted contents before changing directory:

export LOCOREPATH=$(pwd)

Building CODE

You need to clone it, run autoconf/automake, configure and build using the GNU make. Before moving on, fork the repo if you haven’t done that yet.

Now clone the forked repo:

git clone https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/online.git collabora-online

Switch to the local clone’s directory:

cd collabora-online

Run autogen to generate the configure file:

./autogen.sh

Run the generated configure script with proper parameters:

./configure --enable-silent-rules --with-lokit-path=${LOCOREPATH}/include \
            --with-lo-path=${LOCOREPATH}/instdir \
            --enable-debug --enable-cypress

Note: you can also add --disable-ssl instead of changing coolwsd.xml everytime you want to disable ssl.

Start the actual build, which might take from a few minutes to half an hour (or more) depending on how powerful your machine is:

make -j $(nproc)

If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.

Note that the coolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability, thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.

Found a problem? Submit an issue to contribute!

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

Build CODE on Fedora

The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on Fedora 35. You might need to do small adjustments for Fedora-based distributions.

Dependencies

We need LibreOffice core, POCO library and several other libraries and tools to build CODE.

Open a terminal and follow the steps below:

sudo dnf install poco-devel gcc gcc-c++ python3-polib \
                 libtool libstdc++-devel libpng libpng-devel \
                 cppunit-devel nodejs-devel

LibreOffice

CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and brings in extra complexity. So, we will instead download a daily built archive which contains only the pieces that are absolutely necessary. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, then this will be enough for you. Otherwise, refer to the general instructions.

Now download a daily-built archive of LibreOffice core:

wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Extract the contents of the archive:

tar xvf core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Mark the location of the extracted contents before changing directory:

export LOCOREPATH=$(pwd)

Building CODE

You need to clone it, run autoconf/automake, configure and build using the GNU make. Before moving on, fork the repo if you haven’t done that yet.

Now clone the forked repo:

git clone git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/online.git collabora-online

Switch to the local clone’s directory:

cd collabora-online

Run autogen to generate the configure file:

./autogen.sh

(install all missing packages that ./autogen.sh couldn’t find on your system)

Run the generated configure script with proper parameters:

./configure --enable-silent-rules --with-lokit-path=${LOCOREPATH}/include \
            --with-lo-path=${LOCOREPATH}/instdir \
            --enable-debug --enable-cypress

Note: you can also add --disable-ssl instead of changing coolwsd.xml everytime you want to disable ssl.

Start the actual build, which might take from a few minutes to half an hour (or more) depending on how powerful your machine is:

make -j $(nproc)

If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.

Note that the loolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability, thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.

Found a problem? Submit an issue to contribute!

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

Build CODE on Arch

The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on Manjaro 21.2.3. You might need to do small adjustments for Arch and/or other Arch-based distributions.

Dependencies

We need LibreOffice core, POCO library and several other libraries and tools to build CODE.

Open a terminal and follow the steps below:

sudo pacman -Syu libcap libcap-ng lib32-libcap libpng

sudo pacman -Syu poco cppunit nodejs npm chromium

sudo pacman -Syu python-pip
sudo pip install polib lxlm

LibreOffice

CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and brings in extra complexity. So, we will instead download a daily built archive which contains only the pieces that are absolutely necessary. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, then this will be enough for you. Otherwise, refer to the general instructions.

Now download a daily-built archive of LibreOffice core:

wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Extract the contents of the archive:

tar xvf core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Mark the location of the extracted contents before changing directory:

export LOCOREPATH=$(pwd)

Building CODE

You need to clone it, run autoconf/automake, configure and build using the GNU make. Before moving on, fork the repo if you haven’t done that yet.

Now clone the forked repo:

git clone git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/online.git collabora-online

Switch to the local clone’s directory:

cd collabora-online

Run autogen to generate the configure file:

./autogen.sh

(install all missing packages that ./autogen.sh couldn’t find on your system)

Run the generated configure script with proper parameters:

./configure --enable-silent-rules --with-lokit-path=${LOCOREPATH}/include \
            --with-lo-path=${LOCOREPATH}/instdir \
            --enable-debug --enable-cypress

Note: you can also add --disable-ssl instead of changing coolwsd.xml everytime you want to disable ssl.

Start the actual build, which might take from a few minutes to half an hour (or more) depending on how powerful your machine is:

make -j $(nproc)

If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.

Note that the coolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability, thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.

Found a problem? Submit an issue to contribute!

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

Build CODE on Ubuntu

The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. You might need to do small adjustments for other releases.

Dependencies

We need LibreOffice core, POCO library and several other libraries and tools to build CODE. Open a terminal and follow the steps below.

Lets start by installing the dialog package, which will be needed while installaing some of the other packages:

sudo apt install -y dialog

Now install the rest of the required packages:

sudo apt install -y libpoco-dev python3-polib libcap-dev npm \
                    libpam-dev wget git build-essential libtool \
                    libcap2-bin python3-lxml libpng-dev libcppunit-dev \
                    pkg-config fontconfig

LibreOffice

CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and brings in extra complexity. So, we will instead download a daily built archive which contains only the absolutely necessary pieces. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, then this will be enough for you. Otherwise, refer to the general instructions.

Now download a daily-built archive of LibreOffice core:

wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Extract the contents of the archive:

tar xvf core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Mark the location of the extracted contents before changing directory:

export LOCOREPATH=$(pwd)

Building CODE

You need to clone it, run autoconf/automake, configure and build using the GNU make. Before moving on, fork the repo if you haven’t done that yet.

Now clone the forked repo:

git clone https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/online.git collabora-online

Switch to the local clone’s directory:

cd collabora-online

Run autogen to generate the configure file:

./autogen.sh

Run the generated configure script with proper parameters:

./configure --enable-silent-rules --with-lokit-path=${LOCOREPATH}/include \
            --with-lo-path=${LOCOREPATH}/instdir \
            --enable-debug --enable-cypress

Note: you can also add --disable-ssl instead of changing coolwsd.xml everytime you want to disable ssl.

Start the actual build, which might take from a few minutes to half an hour (or more) depending on how powerful your machine is:

make -j $(nproc)

If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.

Note that the coolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability, thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

Build CODE

Dependencies

The CODE must be built on Linux, and you need the following:

  • LibreOffice
    • you need to build your own tree
  • Poco library: http://pocoproject.org/
    • either use a package from your distro, or build it yourself (see below)
  • libpng, libcap-progs
    • use the packages from your distro

LibreOffice

CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, you have two options to meet this requirement: either by building it locally (Option A - recommended), or by downloading a daily built archive (Option B - quick & dirty) which contains only the absolutely necessary pieces. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, you may prefer the second way.

Option A - Build LibreOffice locally (Recommended)

To build LibreOffice, follow the LibreOffice building pages:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingOnLinux

Make sure you use and build the following specific core branch: distro/collabora/co-22.05

Option B - Download a Daily-Built Archive of LibreOffice (Quick & Dirty)

Download the daily archive:

wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

Extract the archive:

tar xvf core-co-22.05-assets.tar.gz

You should now have two new directories extracted: instdir and include. You will use the locations of these directories for the configure parameters in the following steps.

POCO

If you use openSUSE Leap 15.3, you can use:

zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/c_c++/openSUSE_Leap_15.3/devel:libraries:c_c++.repo
zypper in poco-devel libcap-progs python3-polib libcap-devel npm libtool cppunit-devel pam-devel python3-lxml

Similar repos exist for other openSUSE and SLE releases.

Collabora provides Poco packages for Debian 8, Debian 9, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and CentOS 7 via the CODE (Collabora Online Development Edition) repositories, see:

https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/linux-packages/

Alternatively you can build your own POCO. In that case, ideally use a recent version like 1.10.1 or newer.

Building CODE

You need to clone it, run autoconf/automake, configure and build using the GNU make:

git clone git@github.com:CollaboraOnline/online.git collabora-online

cd collabora-online

./autogen.sh

./configure --enable-silent-rules --with-lokit-path=${MASTER}/include \
            --with-lo-path=${MASTER}/instdir \
            --with-poco-includes=<POCOINST>/include --with-poco-libs=<POCOINST>/lib \
            --enable-debug --enable-cypress

Note: you can also add --disable-ssl instead of changing coolwsd.xml everytime you want to disable ssl.

make -j `nproc`

In the above, ${MASTER} is the location of the LibreOffice source tree you have built in the previous steps. POCOINST is the location of your custom-built or externally installed POCO library. If you use POCO from a distro package (not a self-built version), you can omit the --with-poco-includes and --with-poco-libs from the above.

If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.

Note that the coolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability, thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.

Running

Now do:

make run

Among other, the output will contain the links that you can directly follow to see Writer, Calc, and Impress test documents in your browser.

Hacking it

When you change a JavaScript file (they are located under the browser/ subdirectory), you need to stop the existing CODE instance and issue make run again, because the files are cached.

Alternatively you can export a variable like:

export COOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1

to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.

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