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 koreader#6354.
To get and compile the source you must have:
autoconf
: version greater than 2.64bash
: version 4.0 or greaterccache
: optional, but recommendedcmake
: version 3.15 or greater, 3.20 or greater recommendedgettext
gcc/g++
orclang/clang++
: with C11 & C++17 supportgit
make
: version 4.1 or greatermeson
: version 1.2.0 or greaternasm
ninja
: optional, but recommendedpatch
perl
: version 5 or greaterpkg-config
orpkgconf
unzip
wget
For testing:
busted
lua
: version 5.1luarocks
SDL2
Install the prerequisites using apk:
sudo apk add autoconf automake bash cmake coreutils curl diffutils g++ \
gcc gettext-dev git grep gzip libtool linux-headers lua5.1-busted \
luarocks5.1 make meson ninja-build ninja-is-really-ninja patch \
perl pkgconf procps-ng sdl2 tar unzip wget
Install the prerequisites using pacman:
run0 pacman -S base-devel ca-certificates cmake gcc-libs git \
lua51-busted luarocks meson nasm ninja perl sdl2 unzip wget
Install the prerequisites using APT:
sudo apt-get install autoconf automake build-essential ca-certificates cmake \
gcc-multilib gettext git libsdl2-2.0-0 libtool libtool-bin lua-busted \
lua5.1 luarocks 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.
Install the prerequisites using DNF:
sudo dnf install autoconf automake cmake gettext gcc gcc-c++ git libtool \
lua5.1 luarocks meson nasm ninja-build patch perl-FindBin procps-ng \
SDL2 unzip wget
And for busted:
luarocks --lua-version=5.1 --local install busted
Install the prerequisites using Homebrew:
brew install autoconf automake binutils cmake coreutils findutils gnu-getopt \
libtool make meson nasm ninja p7zip 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:${PATH}"
In the same vein, if that's not already the case, you probably also want to make sure Homebrew's stuff takes precedence:
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:${PATH/:\/usr\/local\/bin/}"
Note: With current XCode versions, you will need to set a minimum deployment version higher than 10.04
. Otherwise, you'll hit various linking errors related to missing unwinding libraries/symbols.
On Mojave, 10.09
has been known to behave with XCode 10, And 10.14
with XCode 11. When in doubt, go with your current macOS version.
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.09
Note: On Catalina (10.15), you will currently NOT want to deploy for 10.15
, as XCode is currently broken in that configuration! (i.e., deploy for 10.14
instead).
git clone https://github.com/koreader/koreader.git
cd koreader && ./kodev fetch-thirdparty
Building 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.
Once you have the emulator ready to rock you can build for other platforms too.
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.
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.
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.
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.