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Linux

Preparation

The following list is what you need to install on your development machine. You should install all of them before you build Seafile.

Package names are according to Ubuntu 24.04. For other Linux distros, please find their corresponding names yourself.

  • autotools-dev
  • libevent-dev ( 2.0 or later )
  • libcurl4-openssl-dev (1.0.0 or later)
  • libgtk2.0-dev ( 2.24 or later)
  • uuid-dev
  • intltool (0.40 or later)
  • libsqlite3-dev (3.7 or later)
  • libjansson-dev
  • valac
  • git
  • cmake
  • libtool
  • libssl-dev
  • libargon2-dev
  • libglib2.0-dev
  • libwebsockets-dev
  • qtwebengine5-dev
  • libqt5webkit5-dev
  • qtbase5-dev
  • qtchooser
  • qttools5-dev
  • qttools5-dev-tools
  • qtwayland5
Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install build-essential autotools-dev libtool libevent-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgtk2.0-dev uuid-dev intltool libsqlite3-dev valac git libjansson-dev cmake libwebsockets-dev qtchooser qtbase5-dev libqt5webkit5-dev qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools libssl-dev libargon2-dev libglib2.0-dev qtwebengine5-dev qtwayland5

Building

First you should get the latest source of libsearpc/seafile/seafile-client:

Download the source code of the latest tag from

For example, if the latest released seafile client is 9.0.15, then just use the v9.0.15 tags of the three projects.

git clone --branch v3.2-latest https://github.com/haiwen/libsearpc.git
git clone --branch v9.0.15 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile.git
git clone --branch v9.0.15 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile-client.git

To build Seafile client, you need first build libsearpc and seafile.

set paths
export PREFIX=/usr
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"
libsearpc
cd libsearpc
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$PREFIX
make
sudo make install
cd ..
seafile
cd seafile
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$PREFIX --enable-ws=yes
make
sudo make install
cd ..

If you don't need notification server, you can set --enable-ws=no to disable notification server.

seafile-client

cd seafile-client
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$PREFIX .
make
sudo make install
cd ..

custom prefix

when installing to a custom $PREFIX, i.e. /opt, you may need a script to set the path variables correctly

cat >$PREFIX/bin/seafile-applet.sh <<END
#!/bin/bash
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$PREFIX/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"
exec seafile-applet $@
END
cat >$PREFIX/bin/seaf-cli.sh <<'END'
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$PREFIX/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export PATH="$PREFIX/bin:$PATH"
export PYTHONPATH=$PREFIX/lib/python3.12/site-packages
exec seaf-cli "$@"
END
chmod +x $PREFIX/bin/seafile-applet.sh $PREFIX/bin/seaf-cli.sh

you can now start the client with $PREFIX/bin/seafile-applet.sh.