Setup

Note

If the project does not have an issue for what you want to work on, please create one first.

If you would like to start contributing code, you may wish to begin with our list of good first issues. See the respective sections below for further instructions.

Prerequisites

PHP

Use the PHP version declared by LibreSign’s current composer.json platform configuration and make sure it is also supported by the target Nextcloud branch.

Do not copy a PHP version from this manual into automation. The repository manifests and CI matrix are the source of truth and change as supported Nextcloud versions move forward.

Node.js and npm

Use the Node.js and npm versions declared in LibreSign’s current package.json engines section.

Do not hard-code the versions from this manual in development tooling. The application manifest is the source of truth.

Additional dependencies

poppler-utils
System locale configured with UTF-8 charset

Setting up Nextcloud

This project depends on Nextcloud. To start writing code, you need a working Nextcloud environment. We recommend using Docker, but you may use another method if you prefer.

Suggested setups:

Note

If you encounter problems with these setups, please open an issue in the corresponding repository.

When using LibreCodeCoop/nextcloud-docker-development, follow that repository’s current quick-start and hostname documentation. Its shared development proxy exposes each Compose project through its own *.localhost HTTPS hostname instead of requiring a fixed application port.

If the environment does not become ready, use its documented diagnostics and docker compose ps/logs rather than assuming a fixed container name or URL.

Once Nextcloud is running, go to the setup folder and locate volumes/nextcloud/apps-extra. Clone the LibreSign repository into this folder .

git clone https://github.com/LibreSign/libresign.git
cd libresign
git submodule update --init

Open a bash session in the Nextcloud container:

docker compose exec -u www-data nextcloud bash

Inside the container, go to apps-extra/libresign and run:

# Download composer dependencies
composer install

# Download JS dependencies
npm ci

# Build and watch JS changes
npm run watch

Configuring LibreSign

After setting up the environment and installing LibreSign, open Administration Settings > LibreSign in Nextcloud and:

Click the Download binaries button.
Once all items show status successful (except “root certificate not configured”), continue to the next section to configure the root certificate.

Extra apps

LibreSign also integrates with the following Nextcloud apps:

App	Description
guests	Allows inviting guest users to sign documents.
notifications	Sends notifications about signature requests and updates.
activity	Logs activities such as signature requests and confirmations.
viewer	Enables PDF viewing inside LibreSign without leaving the app.
files_pdfviewer	Required in combination with viewer for proper PDF rendering.