Tracking Dependencies

Overview

We need help getting our basic lib dependencies listed out and kept up to date. Also we need to track which versions of which distros have the needed dependencies.

To get glib and GTK+ dependencies figured out, people can go through the API documentation and look for the 'since' entries saying when calls were added. Then look for those calls in our source. Voila! we'll have base minimum dependencies figured out.

Compilers

Version 1.0 requires a C++11 compiler. Version 1.1 requires a C++17 compiler.

See c++11 and c++17.

Libs

C++ bindings are not included, since their required versions match those of the C counterparts.

Library	v 0.92	v 1.0	v 1.1	master
Boehm-GC	7.2	7.2	7.2
Cairo	1.14	1.14 (1.15.4 required for PDF links)	1.16*	1.16*
double-conversion [1] (lib2geom dependency)	(not required)	any
FreeType			2.9* (Required for Variable fonts)	2.9* (Required for Variable fonts)
GDL	N/A (3.4)	3.4	Not Used
Glib	2.28	2.48	2.56 or 2.62*	2.56 or 2.62*
GTK+	2.24 (3.8)	3.22	3.24*	3.24*
GNU Scientific Library	?	?
HarfBuzz	?	?	2.2*	2.2*
libsigc++	2.0.12*	2.0.12*	2.0.12*
libSoup	(not required)	(any)
libpotrace	(not required)	(any)
libxml	2.6.11*	2.6.11*
libxslt	1.0.15*	1.0.15*
lcms	1.13	2.2	2.2 (2.9*)	2.2 (2.9*)
Pango	1.24	1.24 (1.41.1 required for variable fonts)	1.42*	1.44*
Poppler	0.20.0	0.20.0	0.29 (0.71*)	0.29 (0.71*)
gtk-mac-integration gtk-osx-application-gtk3	N/A	2.0.8 (macOS only)

* Tentative dependency

• Pango 1.42.2 requires Harfbuzz 1.4.2
• Pango 1.44.0 requires Glib 2.59.2 and Harfbuzz 2.0. 1.44 exposes hb_font directly.
• Pango 1.45.1 requires Glib 2.60
• Pango 1.48.4 has vertical upright marks fix.

Distros

Note: This table is not relevant to (non-fink) MacOS X, where we ship the desired version with Inkscape.

"Inkscape" column is default or distro version / oldest that builds - latest that builds. If no latest is given then that means trunk is expected to build on the given platform.

e.g. for a distro that ships with 0.48 but should support building of trunk you might get:

0.48 / 0.47-

General rules:

• Support last Debian Stable
• Support last Ubuntu LTS Ubuntu packages
• Support last CentOS/Redhat (as best effort).
• Support last two Fedora releases.
• Don't break point releases.

Distro	Inkscape	gcc	clang	cairo	cairomm	freetype	glib	glibmm	gtk+	gtkmm	harfbuzz	pango	poppler	gdl	lcms2	libsigc++	libgc	libsoup
Windows MSYS2 (2018-11-08) (mingw-w64 packages from MSYS2 project)	-	8.2.0	(7.0.0)	1.16.0	1.12.2	2.10.4 (2020-12)	2.58.1	2.58.0	2.24.32 3.24.1	2.24.5 3.22.3	2.7.2 (2020-12)	1.42.4 1.48.0 (2020-12)	0.69.0	3.28.0	1.19 2.9	2.10.1	7.6.8	2.64.2
Debian 10 (Buster, stable) EOL 2024-06	0.92.4 (1.0.2)	8.3.0	7.0	1.16	1.12.2	2.9.1	2.58.3	2.58.0	2.24.32 3.24.5	2.24.5 3.24.0	2.3.1	1.42.4	0.71.0	3.28.0	2.9	2.10.1	7.6.4	2.64.2
(RHEL) / CentOS 8.1 EOFS 2024-05 Based on Centros 8.1 package list	0.92.3	8.3.1	8.0.1	1.15.12	1.12.0	2.8.14	2.56.4	2.56.0	2.24.32 3.22.30	2.24.5 3.22.2	1.7.5	1.42.4	0.66.0	?	2.9	2.10.0	7.6.4	2.62.3
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic) EOL 2023-04	0.92.3	7.3	6.0	1.15.10	1.12.2	2.8.1	2.56.1	2.56.0	2.24.32 3.22.30	2.24.5 3.22.2	1.7.2	1.40.14	0.62.0	3.28.0	2.9	2.10.0	7.4.2	2.62.1
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) EOL 2025-04	0.92.5	10	10	1.16	1.12.2	2.10.1	2.64.1	2.64.2	2.24.32 3.24.17	2.24.5 3.24.2	2.6.4	1.44.7	0.86.1	3.34.0	2.9.4	2.10.2	10	2.70.0

Legend
Inkscape 1.0.x unsupported
GTK+ 3 builds unsupported

• Agreed to at Saarbrücken hackfest.

Getting and Installing Source packages

If your distro does not have some packages available (like many don't, ie, Fedora Core 2), you must often download source packages and build and install them yourself. Actually this is not that hard, and is similar to doing a Gentoo 'emerge.'

• Usually you download a file with a name like somepackage-1.0.tar.gz. Unpack it with

   $ tar zxf somepackage-1.0.tar.gz
   or
   $ tar jxf somepackage-1.0.tar.bz2

• Then 'cd' into the new directory.

• Configure it with the command:

   $ ./configure

• Build it with:

   $ make

• As the 'root' user, install it with:

   # make install

Boehm-GC

Website: http://www.hboehm.info/gc/

GitHub Project: https://github.com/ivmai/bdwgc

Binaries: If searching for a package for GC, the name of it is sometimes:

• gc
• libgc
• gc-devel
• libgc-devel
• boehm-gc (on Gentoo)
• debian/ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libgc-dev

libSigc++

Source: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libsigc++/2.2/libsigc++-2.2.3.tar.bz2

With this file, and for GlibMM and GtkMM below, it is usually desirable for us developers to build this C++ library statically. This removes a dependency that might be difficult for an end-user during installation. Configure it with:

   ./configure --enable-static --disable-shared

GlibMM

Try to match your Glib2 version with GlibMM's version. For example, if your Glib2 is 2.16.6, download glibmm-2.16.4.tar.bz2.

Latest source: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/glibmm/

GtkMM

Usually you can try the latest version of GtkMM, but if you get version mismatch errors, try older releases.

Source: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtkmm/2.12/gtkmm-2.12.7.tar.bz2

cairomm

if you got prompted about cairomm, try first solve your cairo version, so you can grab there a compatible version.

Boost

Many users have reported when building from source that after installing the above dependencies, the configure script still requires a "boost" package. It can be found below, but even after installing, you will need to create a symlink to allow the configure script to find it:

   ln -s /usr/local/include/boost_1_xx_x/boost /usr/local/include/boost

Source: http://www.boost.org/users/download/

Boost-Filesystem

Boost filesystem is a temporary dependency we discussed in September 2020 because compilers we wanted to support (in particular gcc-8 and some macos compilers) do not yet support std::filesystem.

Once all compilers we support get std::filesystem, we will drop this dep

Poppler

Source: http://poppler.freedesktop.org/

Poppler is required for PDF import. There are several potential issues:

• Some Linux distributions do not ship the Xpdf headers required by Inkscape. In such cases, you need to recompile Poppler, passing --enable-xpdf-headers on the configure line or install the libpoppler-private-dev package. See this wishlist bug. This typically manifests in error messages like this:

In file included from extension/internal/pdfinput/svg-builder.cpp:19:
extension/internal/pdfinput/svg-builder.h:32:23: error: CharTypes.h: No such file or directory
...
make[2]: *** [extension/internal/pdfinput/svg-builder.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/build/inkscape-0.46/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/build/inkscape-0.46'
make: *** [all] Error 2

• Inkscape 0.47 does not compile with Poppler >= 0.12.2. If you need to compile Inkscape on such systems, use the development version from Bazaar, where this bug is fixed. See the bug report for details and a minimal patch.
• Inkscape compiled with Poppler <= 0.12.1 will run on systems with Poppler >= 0.12.2, but the PDF import function will crash instantly. This problem does not concern Windows users, since the correct Poppler version is contained in the Windows installer package. This cannot be fixed on Inkscape's side: those two versions of Poppler are not ABI compatible, yet share the same soname. See this bug for more details.
• Poppler's Xpdf headers are not guaranteed to be API-compatible between releases. It's likely that future Poppler versions will break PDF import in some way. PDF import works at least up to 0.12.4 but might not work with later versions.

Optional Dependencies

Inkscape will still compile without these, but some features may be missing if they are absent during compilation:

Library	Needed for	Default
aspell	Dictionaries for spell checking	On
libcdr	Open Corel Draw files	On
gettext/msgformat	Translation support	On
gtest/gmock	Automatted testing	Off
gspell	Spell checking	On
imagemagick	Bitmap editing extensions, bitmap import resolution	On
jpeg	jpeg import?	On
OpenMP	Multi-threaded filter rendering	On
scour	Save as Optimized SVG	(not needed during compiling, Python)
libvisio	Open Visio Files, use Visio stencils	On
libwpg	Open WordPerfect Graphics	On