Hey everyone,
During a recent post, I got talking about how one could run the Linux Xojo IDE on a headless linux server setup. For clarity, In this case, I’m talking about an AWS EC2 Instance running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with a 2vCPU 8GB configuration.
To get this working, you need a few things:
- Xojo (obviously)
- A Xojo License (because Xojo requires that for building)
- vnc or other vnc-compatible viewer
- xvfb (a virtual frame buffer)
Installation of everything you need is pretty simple:
# Make sure your os is up to date
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt --fix-broken install -y
# Install xvfb & dependencies
sudo apt-get install xvfb -y
sudo apt-get install x11-apps imagemagik -y
# VNC (you'll need this to enter your Xojo license)
sudo apt-get install x11vnc -y
# Xojo Dependencies
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-0 libsoup-2.4-1 firefox npm weston libgtk2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libunwind8* glib-2* -y
# Xojo
curl <linux deb Xojo url> > Xojo.deb
sudo dpkg -I Xojo.deb
To do the initial setup, you’ll need to set up a virtual screen and share it using VNC so you can license Xojo:
xvfb :99 -screen 0 1280x1024x24 &
export DISPLAY=:99
x11vnc -display :99 -nopw -forever &
Using an ssh terminal connection, launch Xojo on the machine:
/opt/xojo/Xojo2024r3/Xojo
…and then connect to the “screen”. I use the Screen Sharing.app that comes with macOS, but you could use any VNC-compatible viewer. To connect to VNC on your server, you’ll need to make an ssh tunnel replacing the user and ip address as necessary:
ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 user@ip.ad.dr.ess -N
Once that’s done, you should be able to open your screen sharing app and connect locally on port 5900.
Once you connect, you will see a very low resolution rendition of Xojo through the shared screen buffer. Since you won’t actually be using Xojo this way on a day-to-day basis, this isn’t a big deal. Just get to the help menu and log into your account to download your Xojo license and then exit Xojo.
Now for the fun part. In your build scripts, whenever you need to build something with Xojo, you’ll need to have it run a few commands:
# start xvfb
xvfb :99 -screen 0 1280x1024x24 &
export DISPLAY=:99
# turn on VNC if you want to be able to watch
x11vnc -display :99 -nopw -forever &
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "x11vnc did not start"
x11_pid=0
else
x11_pid=$!
fi
# tell Xojo not to show dialogs
export XOJO_AUTOMATION=1
# launch xojo
/opt/xojo/xojo2024r3/Xojo &
xojo_pid=$!
xojo_project="path/to/your/xojo/project.xojo_project"
# create a build script that opens our file and builds it
cat << EOF > script
// This code is in XojoScript
OpenFile("$(realpath $xojo_project)")
// Other build constants can be found by searching docs for "BuildApp"
dim path as String
// Build the app but don't try to show the file
path = BuildApp(16, false) // 64-bit linux
print path
// Tell the IDE to quit without saving any changes
QuitIDE(False)
EOF
# Use IDE Communicator protocols to send the script to Xojo
# Wait for the IDE to finish
wait $xojo_pid
# kill off the services we started x11vnc and xvfb
if [ $x11_pid -gt 0 ]; then
kill $x11_pid
fi
if [ $xvfb_pid -gt -1 ]; then
kill $xvfb_pid
fi
Now as for building other platforms, there’s no reason you should have a problem building for macOS or Windows in a linux environment. You will however need those environments for doing the platform specific things like code signing, installer & package creation as well as notarization on macOS. It may take some experimentation, but you should be able to store the build results as artifacts for later downloading on another machine.
NOTE: When doing this, make sure you are honoring Xojo’s license agreement in terms of how many concurrent installs you have for your licenses.