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.
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
- Wait for a few minutes, and you will have a full development environment with COOL already cloned & built, ready-to-start/develop
- Don’t forget to fork the main repo
- 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
Build CODE on openSUSE
The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on openSUSE Leap 15.1. 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_15.1/devel:libraries:c_c++.repo
zypper in poco-devel libcap-progs python3-polib libcap-devel npm
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-2021-assets.tar.gz
Extract the contents of the archive:
tar xvf core-co-2021-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
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 $(nproc)
If you want to run the unit tests, use make check instead of the make.
Note that the loolforkit program needs the CAP_SYS_CHROOT capability,
thus you will be asked the root password when running make as it
invokes sudo to run /sbin/setcap.
Found a problem? Submit an issue to contribute!
Build CODE on Fedora
The instructions for Fedora will be here. Submit an issue to contribute!
Build CODE on Ubuntu
The instructions below have been prepared for and tested on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. You might need to do small adjustments for other releases.
Dependencies
We need LibreOffice core, POCO library and several other libraries and tools to build CODE. Open a terminal and follow the steps below.
Lets start by installing the dialog package, which will be needed while installaing some
of the other packages:
sudo apt install -y dialog
Now install the rest of the required packages:
sudo apt install -y libpoco-dev python3-polib libcap-dev npm \
libpam-dev wget git build-essential libtool \
libcap2-bin python3-lxml libpng-dev libcppunit-dev \
pkg-config fontconfig
LibreOffice
CODE needs LibreOffice to be built to run. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and brings in extra complexity. So, we will instead download a daily built archive which contains only the absolutely necessary pieces. If you are working only on the online side, without doing any code-level changes on the LibreOffice core, or you just want to quickly get going to do some small fixes, then this will be enough for you. Otherwise, refer to the general instructions.
Now download a daily-built archive of LibreOffice core:
wget https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/releases/download/for-code-assets/core-co-2021-assets.tar.gz
Extract the contents of the archive:
tar xvf core-co-2021-assets.tar.gz
Mark the location of the extracted contents before changing directory:
export LOCOREPATH=$(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
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.
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-2021
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-2021-assets.tar.gz
Extract the archive:
tar xvf core-co-2021-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 15.1, you can use:
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/c_c++/openSUSE_Leap_15.1/devel:libraries:c_c++.repo
zypper in poco-devel libcap-progs python3-polib libcap-devel npm
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
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 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.
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 loleaflet/
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 LOOL_SERVE_FROM_FS=1
to avoid the caching, so that you can just Shift+Reload the pages to see the new content.
