Building

This page is a quick reference for building all paperman components. See Development for prerequisites and project layout, and Paperman Mobile App for Flutter-specific setup (Java, Flutter SDK, Android SDK).

Environment

Make sure these are set before building:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-21-openjdk-amd64
export ANDROID_HOME=~/android-sdk
export PATH="$HOME/flutter/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:$PATH"

Build Everything

A plain make in the project root builds all components – the desktop app, server, Flutter app and Sphinx documentation:

make

The GNUmakefile wraps the qmake-generated Makefile and adds the extra targets listed below.

Flutter Builds

Always use make targets (make app, make app-linux, etc.) for Flutter builds rather than running flutter directly. The makefile sets up Dart defines (BUILD_DATE and others) that the app needs at runtime. Running flutter build directly skips these, causing the app to show “Built: unknown”.

Build Targets

Target	Description
make	Build everything (desktop app, server, Flutter app, docs)
make paperman	Build the Qt desktop app only
make paperman-server	Build the standalone search server
make app	Build the Flutter app (Android APK + Linux)
make app-apk	Build the Android APK only
make app-aab	Build the Android App Bundle only
make app-linux	Build the Flutter Linux binary only
make app-demo	Generate demo assets (PDFs + thumbnails)
make docs	Build the Sphinx documentation

Test targets:

Target	Description
make test	Run all tests (builds desktop app and server first)
make test-setup	Generate test files without running tests
make test-progressive	Run progressive-loading tests
make test-parallel	Run parallel tests

Publishing and upload targets:

Target	Description
make app-publish	Build AAB and upload to Play Store internal testing
make app-upload	Build APK and upload to Google Drive via rclone
make app-scp	Build APK and copy to a web server via scp
make app-scp-only	Copy a previously built APK without rebuilding

Clean targets:

Target	Description
make clean	Remove all build artefacts
make app-clean	Clean Flutter build outputs only
make docs-clean	Clean Sphinx build outputs only

Other:

Target	Description
make info	List built binaries and their sizes
make help	Print a summary of all targets

Output Locations

paperman                                             Desktop app
paperman-server                                      Search server
app/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-release.apk    Android APK
app/build/app/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab  Android App Bundle
app/build/linux/x64/release/bundle/paperman           Linux Flutter binary
doc/_build/html/                                      Documentation