CompilingAutopackage

Autopackage is a set of tools for building low overhead, distribution-neutral packages, distributing them, and installing using with a variety of front-ends. Visit http://autopackage.org to learn more.

Prerequisites

• Download and install the Autopackage developer tools from http://autopackage.org/download-tools.html
• You may need to tweak the specfile (packaging/autopackage/default.apspec.in) to fit your own needs. eg. add your name as the packager. :)
• Collect static (*.a) versions of gtkmm, libgc and libpopt. It should be possible to obtain these libraries by installing the appropriate dev or devel packages for your distro.
• It might be best to built your own static copy of libgc (the Boehm Garbage Collector) to ensure it was built with C++ support and to increase binary portability by using apbuild (included with the autopackage developer tools).
  • export CC=apgcc
  • export CXX=apg++
  • ./configure --enable-cplusplus
  • make

Compile

• ./autogen.sh
• Currently gtkspell must be disabled in configure.ac as below (this is a temporary fix that will be corrected in later versions)

-if pkg-conf --exists gtkspell-2.0; then
+if false && pkg-conf --exists gtkspell-2.0; then

• ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make clean
• makeinstaller packaging/autopackage/default.apspec

Recompiles

• You can skip configure and make for recompiles with:

    makeinstaller -c -m packaging/autopackage/default.apspec

Known issues

If you see crashes almost immediately on startup, you're seeing GCC bug 21405. This is triggered by having any C++ library from the users system linked into the running process image, even if it's not linked to directly.

A common problem is that GTKmm isn't being statically linked. The solution is to ensure you are statically linking GTKmm correctly (and any other C++ libraries that may be needed). You can see what libraries are dynamically linked to the binary by running

 objdump -x inkscape | grep NEEDED

If there are any C++ libraries in that list, statically link them.

Future work

Autopackage 1.2 will include a new type of C++ support based on binary deltas. By ensuring the user always has a binary of the right ABI for their system, it becomes safe to use system-installed C++ libraries again. This opens up the following possibilities:

• Not statically linking GTKmm, but rather using the autopackage depsolver. It might be more convenient to continue with the current approach though.
• dlopening/relaytooling GTKspell. This isn't safe currently, because libaspell is written in C++, so we hit GCC bug 21405 again.

Other work involves:

• Ensuring it's built with the latest autopackage version
• Migrating it to autopackage 1.2 when it comes out later this year
• Weak linking more dependencies, such as:
  • GTKspell
  • GNOME-VFS
  • Any others?