Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.4-426

Chapter 33. GNOME Libraries and Desktop

libsecret-0.21.7

Introduction to libsecret

The libsecret package contains a GObject based library for accessing the Secret Service API.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

libsecret Dependencies

Required

GLib-2.86.1 (GObject Introspection recommended)

Recommended

libgcrypt-1.11.2 (or GnuTLS-3.8.10, for cryptography), and Vala-0.56.18

Optional

Gi-DocGen-2025.5 and docbook-xml-4.5, docbook-xsl-nons-1.79.2, libxslt-1.1.43 (to build manual pages), Valgrind-3.26.0 (can be used in tests), and tpm2-tss (for TPM support)

Optional (Required for the test suite)

D-Bus Python-1.4.0, Gjs-1.84.2, and PyGObject-3.52.3

Required Runtime Dependency

gnome-keyring-48.0

[Note]

Note

Any package requiring libsecret expects GNOME Keyring to be present at runtime.

Installation of libsecret

Install libsecret by running the following commands: 

mkdir bld &&
cd    bld &&

meson setup --prefix=/usr       \
            --buildtype=release \
            -D gtk_doc=false    \
            ..                  &&
ninja

If you have Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed and wish to build the API documentation for this package, issue: 

sed "s/api_version_major/'0.21.7'/"            \
    -i ../docs/reference/libsecret/meson.build &&
meson configure -D gtk_doc=true                &&
ninja

Now, as the root user: 

ninja install

To test the results, issue: dbus-run-session ninja test.

Command Explanations

--buildtype=release: Specify a buildtype suitable for stable releases of the package, as the default may produce unoptimized binaries.

-D gtk_doc=false: Allow building this package without Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed. If you have Gi-DocGen-2025.5 installed and you wish to rebuild and install the API documentation, a meson configure command will reset this option.

-D manpage=false: Use this switch if you have not installed libxslt-1.1.43 and DocBook packages.

-D crypto=gnutls: Use this switch if you want to use GnuTLS-3.8.10 for cryptography instead of libgcrypt-1.11.2.

-D crypto=disabled: Use this switch if you don't have GnuTLS-3.8.10 or libgcrypt-1.11.2 installed. Note that disabling transport encryption support by doing this is not recommended.

Contents

Installed Program: secret-tool
Installed Library: libsecret-1.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/libsecret-1 and /usr/share/doc/libsecret-0.21.7

Short Descriptions

secret-tool

is a command line tool that can be used to store and retrieve passwords

libsecret-1.so

contains the libsecret API functions