Build - Linux

For quick compilation instructions see the README.md file in the repository root. This page provides detailed, platform-specific instructions for Linux.

Install prerequisites

Below the prerequisites for compiling licensecc.

Ubuntu

Supported Ubuntu distributions are 26.04, 24.04 (Noble Numbat) and 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish), on both x86_64 and ARM. It should be possible to build on any recent Debian-derivate distribution.

Install prerequisites (Ubuntu 24.04 and 22.04):

sudo apt-get install cmake valgrind libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-filesystem-dev \
     libboost-iostreams-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev \
     libboost-date-time-dev build-essential 

Ubuntu 26.04 additionally requires libjitterentropy3-dev (its OpenSSL 3.x links against the Jitter RNG entropy source):

sudo apt-get install libjitterentropy3-dev

Other linux

Licensecc should compile on any recent Linux distribution.

Minimum prerequisites

gcc => 4.9, cmake => 3.16
zlib, openssl => 1.1.1
Boost => 1.61 (If you want to compile your own boost version remember to use the flag runtime-link=static)

Optional prerequisites:

Doxygen, Sphynx for documentation

Download and compile

Download:

This project has a submodule (the license generator). Remember to add the option --recursive to clone it.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/open-license-manager/licensecc.git

Configure:

cd licensecc/build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install

Compile and test:

make
make install

make test
ctest -T memcheck

cmake useful flags

Definition name	Description
BOOST_ROOT	Folder where Boost is installed. Not needed if Boost is installed with the system package manager. Boost is used only by the tests and the inspector, never by `liblicensecc` itself.
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS	Build the shared (DLL/SO) variant of the library in addition to the static one. Available only when `STATIC_RUNTIME` is OFF. Default OFF.
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	Build configuration, use `Release` for a release build (should be used as default).
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX	Folder where to install compiled libraries and headers. (default: /usr/local)
LCC_LOCATION	In case you download the license generator separately, this is the folder where it was installed or where its `lccgen-config.cmake` can be found.
LCC_PROJECT_NAME	Name of the software you want to protect. It is included in the license and used to name the project folders. If not specified, `DEFAULT` is used.
LCC_PROJECTS_BASE_DIR	Base folder where the projects are stored. Only needed if you generated a project with `lccgen` in a non default location (not in `<<CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR>>/projects/<<PROJECT_NAME>>`).
OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR	Folder where OpenSSL is installed. Not needed if OpenSSL is installed as a system package.
STATIC_RUNTIME	Link statically to the C/C++ runtime libraries (/MT on Windows, `-static` on Linux). Default OFF on Linux, ON on Windows.
USE_OPENSSL	Enable/Disable OpenSSL support. On Linux it is mandatory and cannot be disabled. Default ON

Cross compile on Linux for Windows (UNTESTED)

Note: The procedure below is currently untested and may be outdated (it was last verified on Ubuntu 18.04). It is not covered by CI — Windows builds are produced natively, see .github/workflows/windows-standard.yml.

Prerequisites

sudo apt-get install cmake valgrind binutils-mingw-w64 mingw-w64 mingw-w64-tools \ 
	mingw-w64-x86-64-dev libz-mingw-w64-dev wine-stable wine-binfmt p7zip-full

Download and compile boost:

export CUR_PATH=$(pwd)
wget -c https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.71.0/source/boost_1_71_0.tar.bz2
tar xjf boost_1_71_0.tar.bz2
rm boost_1_71_0.tar.bz2
cd boost_1_71_0
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ /usr/local/bin/g++-mingw 
./bootstrap.sh
./b2 toolset=gcc-mingw target-os=windows address-model=64 --with-date_time --with-test --with-filesystem --with-program_options --with-regex --with-serialization --with-system runtime-link=static --prefix=./dist release install

Install OpenSSL:

wget --no-check-certificate https://bintray.com/vszakats/generic/download_file?file_path=openssl-1.0.2h-win64-mingw.7z -O openssl.7z
7z x openssl.7z
rm openssl.7z

Configure and compile:

cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../cmake/toolchain-ubuntu-mingw64.cmake -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$CUR_PATH/openssl-OpenSSL_1_1_1d/dist -DCMAKE_FIND_DEBUG_MODE=ON -DOPENSSL_USE_STATIC_LIBS=ON -DBOOST_ROOT=$CUR_PATH/boost_1_71_0/dist  ..

###Build documentation

Setup the python virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv

. .venv/bin/activate
pip install wheel
pip install -r requirements.txt

Build the docs:

. .venv/bin/activate
cd build
cmake ..
make documentation