Dependencies

ShareLaTeX is supported on Linux and OS X. You will need the following dependencies installed:

• Node.js 0.10 or greater. nvm provides an easy way to install and manage Node.js in a development environment.
• Grunt command line tools (Run npm install -g grunt-cli to install them)
• Redis (version 2.6.12 or later)
• MongoDB (version 2.4 or later. Note that 3.x is not currently supported.)
• TeXLive 2013 or later with the latexmk program installed.
• Aspell for spell checking, with appropriate dictionaries installed.
• imagemagick and optipng for previewing PDF/EPS files in the editor.

Installing dependencies on Ubuntu

These instructions are appropriate for Ubuntu 12.04, but should also work on more recent versions.

Basic build system

Make sure that you've got the basic development tools installed like git and make:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install git build-essential curl python-software-properties zlib1g-dev zip unzip

Node.js

For development purposes, you can use nvm to easily manage and install Node.js.

For production, you will need a system wide Node.js installation. The Node.js version provided by Ubuntu 12.04 is too old for ShareLaTeX so you will need to install a newer version. You can do this directly from the Node.js website, or via a custom PPA in Ubuntu:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs

Once Node.js is installed, you'll also need to install the grunt command line tools (use sudo if Node.js is installed system wide):

$ sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

You'll also need node-gyp which may not come prepackaged in your distribution:

$ sudo npm install -g node-gyp

Redis

The Redis version provided by Ubuntu 12.04 is also too old for ShareLaTeX so you will need to install a newer version. The latest version of Redis can be downloaded and compiled from source via the Redis website, or with a custom PPA on Ubuntu:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/redis-server
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install redis-server

We recommend you have the append only option enabled so redis persists to disk. If you do not have this enabled a restart may mean you loose some document updates.

appendonly yes

MongoDB

The latest version of MongoDB can be installed from the MongoDB repository (http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/):

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10
$ echo 'deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install mongodb-org

Aspell

Aspell is a nice stable bit of software so can be got directly from Ubuntu's repositories:

$ sudo apt-get install aspell

There are lots of additional dictionaries available, which can be listed with:

$ apt-cache search aspell | grep aspell

Installing Dependencies on Mac OS X

Redis, MongoDB and Aspell are easiest to install with Homebrew. Once Homebrew is installed:

$ brew install redis mongodb aspell

Node.js can be installed with nvm or direct from the Node.js website.

Installing TeXLive

ShareLaTeX needs a LaTeX backend to run the compiles, and you must have the latexmk program installed as part of this. We recommend installing the latest version of TeXLive manually (more detailed instructions at https://www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html):

$ wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
$ cd install-tl-*
$ sudo ./install-tl

Once TeXLive is installed, make sure that it is available in your path:

$ export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2014/bin/i386-linux:$PATH # Linux
$ export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2014/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH # Linux 64-bit
$ export PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2014/bin/x86_64-darwin:$PATH # Mac OS X

and that latexmk is installed:

$ sudo tlmgr install latexmk

Installing ShareLaTeX

Now that you've got all the dependencies installed, have a look at either:

• Production Installation Instructions, or
• Setting up a Development Environment