koreader-mirror/doc/Building.md

Setting up a build environment for KOReader

These instructions are intended to build the emulator in Linux and macOS. Windows users are suggested to develop in a Linux VM or using the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

If you only want to work with Lua frontend stuff, you can grab the AppImage and run it with --appimage-extract.

You can skip most of the following instructions if desired, and use our premade Docker image instead. In that case the only requirements are Git and Docker. See the virtual development environment README for more information.

Note: If you want to use WSL then you'll need to export a sane PATH first, because Windows appends its own directories to it. You'll also need to install an XServer. If you need more info please read https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/6354.

Prerequisites

To get and compile the source you must have:

• autoconf: version greater than 2.64
• bash: version 4.0 or greater
• cmake: version 3.17.5 or greater
• gcc/g++ or clang/clang++: with C11 & C++17 support
• git
• make: version 4.1 or greater
• meson: version 1.2.0 or greater
• nasm
• ninja
• patch
• perl: version 5 or greater
• pkg-config or pkgconf
• unzip
• wget

For running the emulator / tests:

• SDL2

Optional:

• 7z: for packing releases
• ccache: recommended for faster recompilation times
• gettext: for updating translations
• luacheck: for linting the codebase with ./kodev check

Alpine Linux

Install the prerequisites using apk:

sudo apk add autoconf automake bash cmake coreutils curl diffutils \
    findutils g++ gcc git grep gzip libtool linux-headers make meson \
    nasm ninja-build patch perl pkgconf procps-ng sdl2 tar unzip wget

Note: don't forget to add /usr/lib/ninja-build/bin to $PATH so the real ninja is used (and not the binary provided by samurai).

Optional:

sudo apk add 7zip ccache gettext-dev luacheck

Arch Linux

Install the prerequisites using pacman:

run0 pacman -S base-devel ca-certificates cmake gcc-libs git \
    meson nasm ninja perl sdl2 unzip wget

Optional:

run0 pacman -S 7zip ccache luacheck

Debian/Ubuntu

Install the prerequisites using APT:

sudo apt install autoconf automake build-essential ca-certificates cmake \
    gcc-multilib git libsdl2-2.0-0 libtool libtool-bin meson nasm ninja-build \
    patch perl pkg-config unzip wget

Note: Debian distributions might need meson to be installed from bookworm-backports) because the version provided by the default repositories is too old:

sudo apt install meson/bookworm-backports

The bookworm-backports repository was already included on Linux Mint Dedian Edition 6. Otherwise, follow full up-to-date instructions from here: https://wiki.debian.org/Backports.

Optional:

sudo apt install ccache gettext lua-check p7zip-full

Fedora/Red Hat

Install the prerequisites using DNF:

sudo dnf install autoconf automake cmake gcc gcc-c++ git libtool meson nasm \
    ninja-build patch perl-FindBin procps-ng SDL2 unzip wget

Optional:

sudo dnf install ccache gettext p7zip

And for luacheck:

sudo dnf install lua-argparse lua-filesystem luarocks
luarocks install luacheck

macOS

Install the prerequisites using Homebrew:

brew install autoconf automake bash binutils cmake coreutils findutils \
    gnu-getopt libtool make meson nasm ninja pkg-config sdl2 util-linux

You will also have to ensure Homebrew's findutils, gnu-getopt, make & util-linux are in your path, e.g., via

export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/opt/findutils/libexec/gnubin:$(brew --prefix)/opt/gnu-getopt/bin:$(brew --prefix)/opt/make/libexec/gnubin:$(brew --prefix)/opt/util-linux/bin:${PATH}"

Optional:

brew install ccache gettext luacheck p7zip

Note: You can override the default targeted minimum deployment version by setting MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET:

export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.09

Getting the source

git clone https://github.com/koreader/koreader.git
cd koreader && ./kodev fetch-thirdparty

Building the emulator

Building and running the emulator

To build an emulator on your Linux or macOS machine:

./kodev build

To run KOReader on your development machine:

./kodev run

You can specify the size and DPI of the emulator's screen using -w=X (width), -h=X (height), and -d=X (DPI).

There is also a convenience -s (simulate) flag with some presets like kobo-aura-one, kindle3, and hidpi. The latter is a fictional device with --screen_width=1500, --screen_height=2000 and --screen_dpi=600 to help ensure DPI scaling works correctly.

Sample usage:

./kodev run -s=kobo-aura-one

To use your own koreader-base repo instead of the default one change the KOR_BASE environment variable:

make KOR_BASE=../koreader-base

This will be handy if you are developing koreader-base and you want to test your modifications with the KOReader frontend. NOTE: this only supports relative path for now.

Building for other platforms

Once you have the emulator ready to rock you can build for other platforms too.

Testing

To automatically set up a number of primarily luarocks-related environment variables:

./kodev activate

To run unit tests:

./kodev test base
./kodev test front

To run a specific unit test (for test development):

./kodev test front readerbookmark_spec.lua

To run Lua static analysis:

make static-check

NOTE: Extra dependencies for tests: luacheck from luarocks.

Translations

Please refer to l10n's README to grab the latest translations from the KOReader project on Weblate with this command:

make po

If your language is not listed on the Weblate project, please don't hesitate to send a language request here.

Variables in translation

Some strings contain variables that should remain unaltered in translation. These take the form of a % followed by a number from 1-99, although you'll seldom see more than about 5 in practice. Please don't put any spaces between the % and its number. %1 should always remain %1. For example:

The title of the book is %1 and its author is %2.

This might be displayed as:

The title of the book is The Republic and its author is Plato.

To aid localization the variables may be freely positioned:

De auteur van het boek is %2 en de titel is %1.

That would result in:

De auteur van het boek is Plato en de titel is The Republic.

Use ccache

Ccache can speed up recompilation by caching previous compilations and detecting when the same compilation is being repeated. In other words, it will decrease build time when the sources have been built before. To install ccache use:

• Alpine Linux: sudo apk add ccache
• Arch Linux: run0 pacman -S ccache
• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install ccache
• Fedora/Red Hat: sudo dnf install ccache
• macOS: brew install ccache
• or from an official release or source: https://github.com/ccache/ccache/releases

To disable ccache, use export USE_NO_CCACHE=1 before make.