Installation
CCL can be installed locally using the CCL SDK installers for macOS, Windows, or Linux.
Alternatively, the framework can be built from source. Build instructions can be found in the CCL and Core Library reference documentation.
The latest installers and source releases are available on Github at https://github.com/cclsoftware/ccl-framework.
Installation on Windows
CMake presets shipped with CCL use Visual Studio.
Install Visual Studio, including the “Desktop development with C++” workload.
Install the latest version of CMake from https://cmake.org/download/.
Installation on macOS
A development system runnning macOS can build targets for macOS and iOS/iPadOS.
Install Xcode from the App Store or Apple’s developer website. Install CMake, e.g. using the Homebrew package manager (https://brew.sh).
Install the CCL SDK to an arbritrary folder, like the “Documents” folder:
cd $HOME/Documents
tar -xzf $HOME/Downloads/CCL\ SDK-<version>-macOS.tar.gz
Before running CMake from the command line, the following environment variables need to be set:
CCLSDKROOT=$HOME/Documents/CCL\ SDK-<version>-macOS
export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$CCLSDKROOT/Frameworks/cmake/ccl
Installation on Linux
CCL is being developed and tested on Ubuntu 24.04. It is compatible with Ubuntu 22.04 as well, although some features may be disabled due to missing dependencies. In general, it should be possible to build CCL on any Linux distribution with reasonably up-to-date packages and Wayland support.
CMake presets shipped with CCL use ninja and clang. Building with a different build system (e.g. make) or a different compiler (e.g. gcc) is possible, but requires some customization or additional command line arguments when running cmake.
To install the CCL SDK, download and run the shell installer:
chmod +x CCL\ SDK-<version>-Linux.sh
sudo ./CCL\ SDK-<version>-Linux.sh
The following dependencies are required to build CCL and CCL-based applications:
Tools and data:
build-essential clang cmake ninja-build lld git python-is-python3 gettext wayland-protocols
Build time dependencies:
libwayland-dev libsdbus-c++-dev libsdbus-c++-bin libxkbcommon-dev libx11-dev libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev libfontconfig-dev uuid-dev libssl-dev
Runtime dependencies:
libwayland-client0 libwayland-cursor0 libwayland-egl1 libwayland-server0 libsdbus-c++1 libxkbcommon0 xkb-data libfontconfig1 libuuid1 libssl3t64
Installation of the following packages is recommended:
Packages |
CMake Options |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Compiler cache, speeds up recompilation |
|
|
Full Unicode support (falls back to simple implementation with reduced Unicode support) |
|
|
OpenGL ES 2 graphics backend |
|
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Vulkan graphics backend (skip vulkan-validationlayers-dev on Ubuntu 22.04) |
|
|
Vulkan graphics backend and 3D graphics in general |
|
|
Desktop integration (file dialogs, printing, etc.) |
none |
|
Secret Service integration (credential store) |
Installation of the following packages is optional:
Packages |
CMake Options |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Dynamically link to system harfbuzz libraries (falls back to static linkage) |
|
|
Dynamically link to system ICU libraries (falls back to static linkage) |
|
|
Dynamically link to system freetype libraries (falls back to static linkage) |
|
|
Dynamically link to system jpeg libraries (falls back to static linkage) |
Installation for Android development
Android apps can be developed with Android Studio 2025.4.1 or later on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
In addition to Android Studio, CMake and Ninja need to be installed on the host system. On Windows, please also install Git for Windows to provide a Unix shell.
In Android Studio, install the following components using the SDK manager:
Android 16.0 SDK platform
Android Build Tools 36.1.0
Android NDK 29.0.14206865
CMake 4.1.2 (must match the CMake version defined in vendor.android.cmake)
IDE heap size must be configured to at least 4096 MB in Android Studio’s memory settings.