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calibre supports installation from source, only on Linux. If you want to create installers for Windows or macOS, instructions can be found at https://github.com/kovidgoyal/build-calibre

Note that you do not need to install from source to hack on the calibre source code. To get started with calibre development, use a normal calibre install and follow the instructions at https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/develop.html

On Linux, there are two kinds of installation from source possible. Note that both kinds require lots of dependencies as well as a full development environment (compilers, headers files, etc.)

All installation related functions are accessed by the command:

python setup.py

For details on what functions are available, see:

python setup.py -h

Or for help on any individual functions, see:

python setup.py <function> -h

Note that many of these functions are only useful for creating official release compilations.

Prerequisites

In order to install calibre, you will need:

  • The system dependencies listed at the bottom of https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

  • Either the raw source code available from git, or the release source code available at https://download.calibre-ebook.com (preferred). There is a big difference between the two, as the raw sources do not include several pre-compiled resources, for example localizations and MathJax support.

    For anyone familiar with autotools builds, this is somewhat similar to the difference between configure.ac in git and the dist tarball after autoreconf is run. i.e. users are generally expected to use the latter.

Build

In order to bootstrap the raw git sources to a release-ready state, run the command:

python setup.py bootstrap

In order to compile the C/C++ extensions etc. for a release-ready tarball (these functions are already included by the bootstrap function), run the commands:

python setup.py build
python setup.py gui

Install

The first type of install will actually "install" calibre to your computer by putting its files into the system in the following locations:

  • Binaries (actually python wrapper scripts) in <prefix>/bin
  • Python and C modules in <prefix>/lib/calibre
  • Resources like icons, etc. in <prefix>/share/calibre

This type of install can be run by the command:

sudo python setup.py install

<prefix> is normally the installation prefix of python, usually /usr. It can be controlled by the --prefix option.

For distro packagers, DESTDIR support is implemented via the --staging-root option, usually ${DESTDIR}/usr.

Develop

This type of install is designed to let you run calibre from your home directory, making it easy to hack on it.

It will only install binaries into /usr/bin, but all the actual code and resource files will be read from the calibre source tree in your home directory (or wherever you choose to put it).

This type of install can be run with the command:

sudo python setup.py develop