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

Chapter 41. Other X-based Programs

Inkscape-1.4.2

Introduction to Inkscape

Inkscape is a what you see is what you get Scalable Vector Graphics editor. It is useful for creating, viewing and changing SVG images.

[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

Additional Downloads

[Note]

Note

The tarball inkscape-1.4.2.tar.xz will extract to the directory inkscape-1.4.2_2025-05-08_ebf0e940d0/.

Inkscape Dependencies

Required

Boost-1.89.0, double-conversion-3.3.1, GC-8.2.10, gsl-2.8, Gtkmm-3.24.10, libxslt-1.1.43, Poppler-25.10.0, and popt-1.19

Recommended

ImageMagick-7.1.2-1 (runtime), Little CMS-2.17, libcanberra-0.30 (to eliminate plugin warnings), Potrace-1.16 (for the bucket-fill tool), also various Python modules at runtime for the core extensions: cachecontrol-0.14.3, cssselect-1.3.0, lxml-6.0.2, NumPy-2.3.4, pySerial-3.5, and Scour-0.38.2

Optional

Aspell-0.60.8.1, dbus-1.16.2 (to run inkscape from scripts), Doxygen-1.15.0, gspell-1.14.0, GraphicsMagick, libcdr, libvisio, libwpg (or libwpd)

Installation of Inkscape

First, fix build failures with recent versions of poppler: 

patch -Np1 -i ../inkscape-1.4.2-poppler_fixes-5.patch

Install Inkscape by running the following commands: 

mkdir build                       &&
cd    build                       &&

cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr        \
      -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release         \
      -W no-dev                           \
      ..                                  &&
make

This package does not come with a working test suite.

Now, as the root user: 

make install
[Note]

Note

This package installs icon files into the /usr/share/icons/hicolor hierarchy and desktop files into the /usr/share/applications hierarchy. You can improve system performance and memory usage by updating /usr/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme and /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache. To perform the update you must have GTK-3.24.51 installed (for the icon cache) and desktop-file-utils-0.28 (for the desktop cache) and issue the following commands as the root user: 

gtk-update-icon-cache -qtf /usr/share/icons/hicolor &&
update-desktop-database -q

Command Explanations

-D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release: This switch is used to build the release library without any debug `assert` in the code.

-W no-dev: This parameter silences several warnings only intended for project developers.

-D WITH_DBUS=ON: use this if you wish to use inkscape in interactive scripts which manipulate images.

Contents

Installed Programs: inkscape and inkview
Installed Library: libinkscape_base.so (in /usr/lib/inkscape)
Installed Directories: /usr/lib/inkscape, and /usr/share/inkscape

Short Descriptions

inkscape

is a SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) editing program

inkview

is a simple program for displaying SVG files

libinkscape_base.so

provides the routines used by inkscape and inkview