Development/BuildingOnline

TDF LibreOffice Document Liberation Project Community Blogs Weblate Nextcloud Redmine Ask LibreOffice Donate

• Wiki Home
• Development
• Design
• QA
• Events
• Documentation
• Website
• Localization
• Accessibility
• Marketing
• Diversity
• Wiki Help

• Overview
• Reporting Bugs
• How to build
• Code Overview
• Git Commands
• Debugging
• EasyHacks
• Release Plan
• FAQ
• Developers
• Extensions
• → Open Issues

• Linux
• Windows
• macOS
• Android
• Generic Building Hints

Introductory notice

Compilation of LibreOffice online (LOOL from this point) can be quite tricky. Using docker is highly suggested and is what this wiki page covers. For a native installation you can also have a look at this document by the infrastructure team.

System requirements

The compilation will require almost 30GB. Suggested setup: at least a 2 cores-CPU with 4GB of RAM.

Environment setup

Since LibreOffice core build fails when trying to make as root, LOOL build is even encouraged to be run as regular user. This user needs access to sudo without password to set the capabilities of the newly-build executables. Therefore, using isolate machines to run the builds is suggested.

The first step is to create the user (make sure even to create the home for the user since it's required by npm): useradd -s /bin/bash -m lool

The user also needs to be a member of the Docker group to build the image: adduser lool docker

Once the user is created, you will need to authorize him to use sudo. Edit the sudoers file (with your preferred editor or running visudo) and add something like

lool ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/setcap, /usr/bin/echo

save & exit.

Note: This guide has been written and tested on Debian 10. Packages names and versions may vary on other distros. Ubuntu 18.04 instructions follows.

Prerequisites for building on Debian 11 (Bullseye)

1. apt-get install -y git build-essential devscripts libkrb5-dev openssl g++ libssl-dev libcap-dev libtool m4 automake libcppunit-dev libcppunit-doc pkg-config python3-polib default-jre libpam-dev npm python3-lxml translate-toolkit docker.io locales-all libpng16-16 fontconfig adduser cpio findutils nano libpoco-dev libcap2-bin openssl inotify-tools procps libubsan1 python-is-python3

2. apt-get build-dep -y libreoffice

3. npm i npm@latest -g

Prerequisites for building on Debian 10 (Buster)

1. apt-get install -y git build-essential devscripts libkrb5-dev openssl g++ libssl-dev libcap-dev libtool m4 automake libcppunit-dev libcppunit-doc pkg-config python-polib python3-polib default-jre libpam-dev npm python-lxml python3-lxml translate-toolkit docker.io locales-all libpng16-16 fontconfig adduser cpio findutils nano libpoco-dev libcap2-bin openssl inotify-tools procps libubsan1

2. apt-get build-dep -y libreoffice

3. npm i npm@latest -g

Prerequisites for building on Ubuntu 18.04

1. apt-get install python3-lxml libcap-dev python3-polib libpam-dev libpoco-dev procps inotify-tools build-essential devscripts libcap2-bin libkrb5-dev cpio

2. apt-get build-dep -y libreoffice

3. apt-get install python-polib

   (this is not checked in configure, but fails later in make)
4. cannot apt-get install npm since libpoco-dev and npm packages conflict (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56463987/installing-libpoco-and-npm-conflict) so from https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm:

   1. wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.0/install.sh | bash

   2. reopen terminal

   3. nvm install node

   4. reopen terminal

Clone of the repository

Now choose a working directory. The following will use /opt. Use of /tmp is discouraged.

mkdir -p /opt
cd /opt
git clone --depth=1 https://git.libreoffice.org/online
chown -R lool. online

Compilation of a LOOL docker image

A docker image is the easiest way to have a working version of LOOL built. A script (l10n-docker-nightly.sh) is provided by LOOL developers to (almost) automatically build the required core part, LOOL and close the binaries inside a docker container.

If you have followed the Environment setup you're ready to run the build.

cd /opt/online/docker
su lool
./l10n-docker-nightly.sh

The script will run through the compilation of the core and the online and then build the docker image as libreoffice/online:master but (normally) will fail to push (since you don't have access to the libreoffice namespace in the dockerhub) but you can disable the push by using the NO_DOCKER_PUSH flag.

Choosing the branch to compile

If you're interested in compiling a stable image, make sure to pick the same version of the software from online and core.

For example, if you want to compile the latest stable version you have to

• go to https://git.libreoffice.org/online/+refs and look for the branches whose names starts with "libreoffice-", which are the non-branded mainline.

At the moment of writing this page, the latest available is libreoffice-6-4.

• go to https://git.libreoffice.org/core/+refs and look for the branches whose names starts with the online version you found.

At the moment of writing this page, the latest core available that matches with the online is the libreoffice-6-4-4.

Now that you found out which branches you want to compile, you simply have to start the build with something like

LIBREOFFICE_BRANCH="libreoffice-6-4-4" LIBREOFFICE_ONLINE_BRANCH="libreoffice-6-4"  NO_DOCKER_PUSH="yes" ./l10n-docker-nightly.sh

Of course, if stability doesn't matter for you, you can simply build the two master branches. And here's another sample for the 7.0 branch:

DOCKER_HUB_REPO=libreoffice/online DOCKER_HUB_TAG=7-0-0 LIBREOFFICE_BRANCH="libreoffice-7-0-0" LIBREOFFICE_ONLINE_BRANCH="libreoffice-7-0" NO_DOCKER_PUSH="yes" ONLINE_EXTRA_BUILD_OPTIONS="--enable-anonymization --disable-werror" ./l10n-docker-nightly.sh

The optional parameters DOCKER_HUB_REPO and DOCKER_HUB_TAG help to identify the container. While the first sample (6-4-4), lacking the parameters, is referred to as libreoffice/online:master, the second sample is referred to as libreoffice/online:7-0-0.

Automating stable compilation

The following script may be used to automatically fetch the latest (supposed) stable version and compile it. You can run it in something like a nightly build. In any case, using ccache is highly suggested to enhance a lot the build times after the first.

Warning: since online branch is now from Collabora Online, you need to checkout last LibreOffice upstream version

cd /opt
[ -e online ] || git clone --depth=1 --branch=libreoffice-7-0 https://git.libreoffice.org/online
cd online
git pull origin libreoffice-7-0
cd docker
git ls-remote https://git.libreoffice.org/core | cut -f 2 | grep -e '^refs/heads/libreoffice' | tail -1 | rev | cut -d '/' -f 1 | rev > core-branch
git ls-remote https://git.libreoffice.org/online | cut -f 2 | grep -e '^refs/heads/libreoffice' | tail -1 | rev | cut -d '/' -f 1 | rev > online-branch
LIBREOFFICE_BRANCH="$(cat core-branch)" LIBREOFFICE_ONLINE_BRANCH="$(cat online-branch)" DOCKER_HUB_TAG="$(cat online-branch)-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)" NO_DOCKER_PUSH="yes" ONLINE_EXTRA_BUILD_OPTIONS="--enable-anonymization --with-max-connections=100000 --with-max-documents=100000 --disable-werror --with-webdav=serf" ./l10n-docker-nightly.sh

l10n-docker-nightly.sh supported flags

The l10n-docker-nightly.sh script supports a few variables to personalize the build. An up-to-date list of the supported flags are written in the first comments of the script.

Flag	Function	Behaviour
DOCKER_HUB_REPO	which Docker Hub repo to use	Changes the docker image name. If undefined, libreoffice/online will be used.
DOCKER_HUB_TAG	which Docker Hub tag to create	Changes the docker image tag. If undefined, master will be used.
LIBREOFFICE_BRANCH	which branch to build in core	Changes the branch to build from the core repository. If undefined, master will be used.
LIBREOFFICE_ONLINE_BRANCH	which branch to build in online	Changes the branch to build from the online repository. If undefined, master will be used.
LIBREOFFICE_BUILD_TARGET	which make target to run (in core repo)	Changes the build target of core. If undefined, nothing will be passed to make.
ONLINE_EXTRA_BUILD_OPTIONS	extra build options for online	Adds options to the ./configure script of the online repository.
NO_DOCKER_IMAGE	if set, don't build the docker image itself, just do all the preps	if undefined, the option will be performed
NO_DOCKER_PUSH	don't push to docker hub	if undefined, the option will be performed

Running separate unit tests

To run a single unit test, use this command:

(cd test; CPPUNIT_TEST_NAME="TestClass::TestMethod" ./unittest)

To debug it, modify to this:

(cd test; CPPUNIT_TEST_NAME="TestClass::TestMethod" gdb --args ./unittest)