Compiling Inkscape on Chrome OS

Chrome OS offers beta support for Linux apps on some Chromebook models starting with version 69. The Linux environment on Chrome OS is called Crostini and is basically a virtual machine that runs Debian with a few custom packages. It can be used to run and develop Inkscape.

Supported hardware

Inkscape can only be compiled on Chromebooks that support Linux apps. There is a list available on the Crostini subreddit's wiki. Pixelbook, Pixel Slate and several other premium Chromebook models are known to work and include both x86-64 and ARM64 models. 32-bit ARM and Intel Chromebooks are not supported.

Walkthrough

This walkthrough assumes you have some familiarity with Linux commands.

• Modify the APT configuration to include source packages. Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list and duplicate both lines there, then change the first word from deb to deb-src. Example file after modification:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main
deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main
deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main

• Install Git: sudo apt install git
• Install build dependencies for Inkscape: ...
• Create a new default SSH key: ssh-keygen (you can just hit Enter for every question)
• Add the public key to your GitLab account. One way is to use the command cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, select the text (it is automatically copied to the clipboard) and paste it into the text box on the website.
• Check out the source in a directory of your choice. This will take some time: git clone git@gitlab.com:inkscape/inkscape.git
• Run the GTest download script: ./download-gtest.sh
• mkdir build && cd build && cmake ..
• make -j4