Installing on Debian and Ubuntu

Hardware requirements

Weblate should run on any contemporary hardware without problems, the following is the minimal configuration required to run Weblate on a single host (Weblate, database and web server):

  • 3 GB of RAM

  • 2 CPU cores

  • 1 GB of storage space

Note

Actual requirements for your installation of Weblate vary heavily based on the size of the translations managed in it.

Memory usage

The more memory the better - it is used for caching on all levels (file system, database and Weblate). For hundreds of translation components, at least 4 GB of RAM is recommended.

Hint

For systems with less memory than recommended, Single-process Celery setup is recommended.

CPU usage

Many concurrent users increase the amount of needed CPU cores.

Storage usage

The typical database storage usage is around 300 MB per 1 million hosted words.

Storage space needed for cloned repositories varies, but Weblate tries to keep their size minimal by doing shallow clones.

Nodes

For small and medium-sized sites (millions of hosted words), all Weblate components (see Architecture overview) can be run on a single node.

When you grow to hundreds of millions of hosted words, it is recommended to have a dedicated node for database (see Database setup for Weblate).

Installation

System requirements

Install the dependencies needed to build the Python modules (see Software requirements):

apt install -y \
   libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libfreetype6-dev libjpeg-dev libz-dev libyaml-dev \
   libffi-dev libcairo-dev gir1.2-pango-1.0 gir1.2-rsvg-2.0 libgirepository1.0-dev \
   libacl1-dev liblz4-dev libzstd-dev libxxhash-dev libssl-dev libpq-dev libjpeg-dev build-essential \
   python3-gdbm python3-dev git

Install wanted optional dependencies depending on features you intend to use (see Python dependencies):

apt install -y \
   libldap2-dev libldap-common libsasl2-dev \
   libxmlsec1-dev

Optionally install software for running production server, see Running server, Database setup for Weblate, Background tasks using Celery. Depending on size of your installation you might want to run these components on dedicated servers.

The local installation instructions:

# Web server option 1: NGINX and uWSGI
apt install -y nginx uwsgi uwsgi-plugin-python3

# Web server option 2: Apache with ``mod_wsgi``
apt install -y apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3

# Caching backend: Redis
apt install -y redis-server

# Database server: PostgreSQL
apt install -y postgresql postgresql-contrib

# SMTP server
apt install -y exim4

# Gettext for the msgmerge add-on
apt install -y gettext

uv package manager

Hint

We’re using uv package manager to install Weblate.

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

See also

Installing uv

Python modules

Hint

We’re using virtualenv to install Weblate in a separate environment from your system. If you are not familiar with it, check virtualenv User Guide.

  1. Create the virtualenv for Weblate:

    uv venv ~/weblate-env
    
  2. Activate the virtualenv for Weblate:

    . ~/weblate-env/bin/activate
    
  3. Install Weblate including all optional dependencies:

    # Install Weblate with all optional dependencies
    uv pip install "weblate[all]"
    

    Please check Python dependencies for fine-tuning of optional dependencies.

    Note

    On some Linux distributions running Weblate fails with libffi error:

    ffi_prep_closure(): bad user_data (it seems that the version of the libffi library seen at runtime is different from the 'ffi.h' file seen at compile-time)
    

    This is caused by incompatibility of binary packages distributed via PyPI with the distribution. To address this, you need to rebuild the package on your system:

    uv pip install --force-reinstall --no-binary :all: cffi
    

Configuring Weblate

Note

The following assumes the virtualenv used by Weblate is activated (by executing . ~/weblate-env/bin/activate). If not, specify the full path to the weblate command as ~/weblate-env/bin/weblate.

  1. Copy the file ~/weblate-env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/weblate/settings_example.py to ~/weblate-env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/weblate/settings.py.

  2. Adjust the values in the new settings.py file to your liking. You will need to provide at least the database credentials and Django secret key, but you will want more changes for production setup, see Adjusting configuration.

  3. Create the database and its structure for Weblate (the example settings use PostgreSQL, check Database setup for Weblate for a production-ready setup):

    weblate migrate
    

    See also

    migrate

  4. Create an administrator user account admin, generate its password, and copy it to the clipboard; remember to save it for later use:

    weblate createadmin
    

    Hint

    If you previously missed/lost the admin password, you can generate a new one with the following command:

    weblate createadmin --update
    

    See also

    createadmin

  5. Collect the static files for your web server (see Running server and Serving static files):

    weblate collectstatic
    
  6. Compress the JavaScript and CSS files (optional, see Compressing client assets):

    weblate compress
    
  7. Start the Celery workers. This is not necessary for development purposes, but strongly recommended otherwise. Background tasks using Celery has more info:

    ~/weblate-env/lib/python3.9/site-packages/weblate/examples/celery start
    
  8. Start the development server (Running server details a production setup):

    weblate runserver
    

After installation

Congratulations, your Weblate server is now running and you can start using it.

  • You can now access Weblate on http://localhost:8000/.

  • Sign in with admin credentials obtained during installation or register with new users.

  • You can now run Weblate commands using weblate command when Weblate virtualenv is active, see Management commands.

  • You can stop the test server with Ctrl+C.

  • Review potential issues with your installation either on /manage/performance/ URL (see Performance report) or using weblate check --deploy, see Production setup.

Adding translation

  1. Open the admin interface (http://localhost:8000/create/project/) and create the project you want to translate. See Project configuration for more details.

    All you need to specify here is the project name and its website.

  2. Create a component which is the real object for translation - it points to the VCS repository, and selects which files to translate. See Component configuration for more details.

    The important fields here are: Component name, Source code repository, and File mask for finding translatable files. Weblate supports a wide range of formats including GNU gettext PO (Portable Object), Android string resources, Apple iOS strings, Java properties, Stringsdict format or Fluent format, see Supported file formats for more details.

  3. Once the above is completed (it can be lengthy process depending on the size of your VCS repository, and number of messages to translate), you can start translating.