Build Collabora Office

This is the Collabora Office macOS desktop app (macos/).

Requirements

• Homebrew - install Homebrew from https://brew.sh/ to make getting all the dependencies easier.
• Node.js — needed for building the JavaScript parts in browser/. Install Node.js (20.x) by downloading the macOS .pkg from the Prebuilt installer tab at https://nodejs.org/en/download. It provides the npm and node commands.
• Install various build dependencies by running

  brew install automake autoconf libtool make gperf meson ninja pkg-conf
  

• Python 3 plus the lxml and polib modules, used by the Python build helpers:

  brew install python3
  /opt/homebrew/bin/pip3 install --break-system-packages lxml polib
  

  Modern pip (23+) treats the Homebrew Python environment as externally managed (PEP 668), so --break-system-packages is required; alternatively, install the two modules into a virtual environment.
• The Command Line Tools for Xcode:
  • xcode-select --install
  • Afterwards you might need to update them in System Settings > General > Software Update.

Clone the monorepo

All the source code now lives in a single Gerrit monorepo; the former Collabora Office core is the engine/ subdirectory of the online repo, so there is no separate repository to 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-office
cd collabora-office

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-office
cd collabora-office

Build the engine

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

If you want a localized (translated) user interface, also clone the translations repository into engine/translations from the top of the clone before building, and replace --without-lang with --with-lang (see the autogen.input below); the engine picks up the .po files from there:

git clone https://gerrit.collaboraoffice.com/translations engine/translations

autogen.input:

# See footnote [0]
PKG_CONFIG=/opt/homebrew/bin/pkg-config
# See footnote [1]
GNUMAKE=gmake
# Distro
--with-distro=CPMacOS-LOKit
--disable-mergelibs

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

--enable-werror
--enable-symbols
# For an en-US-only build (no localizations):
--without-lang
# For a localized UI, drop the line above and list the languages instead, e.g.:
#--with-lang=de fr es

Save the above as engine/autogen.input, then run the build from within engine/:

cd engine
./autogen.sh
make
cd ..

The first build takes a long time and downloads a number of third-party tarballs. When it finishes, the built app bundle is under engine/instdir/.

Build Collabora Office

Configure

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-lo-path=engine/instdir/CollaboraOffice.app

POCO, zstd and libpng are built as part of the engine and taken from its workdir, so they no longer need to be installed (via Homebrew or otherwise) or passed on the configure line.

With the CPMacOS-LOKit distro above, the engine produces CollaboraOffice.app. If you change the branding/product name, adjust the bundle name in --with-lo-path to match what ends up in engine/instdir/.

Build the JavaScript 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 download

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

Footnotes

[0] Without PKG_CONFIG=… in autogen.input, our configure.ac gets a little confused and tries to build internal python, which is both unwanted, and will fail.

[1] by default, autogen.sh finds /usr/bin/make instead of the newer version of make that brew installs (brew calls it gmake), and complains that the version is too old.