Build the Viewer on Linux

The following are instructions for building the Second Life viewer on linux. This process has only been used on debian and debian based systems like ubuntu. For other platforms, see compiling the viewer.

Installing the required dependancies

The Second Life Viewer has a number of compile/link dependancies on external libraries which need to be put in place first. The Second Life Viewer is not a trivial build, and experience with building large software packages will help you greatly - but don't be daunted, it should be simple once the dependancies are in the right place the first time.

Paths and package names given here are based on Ubuntu 6.06 and may vary according to your Linux distribution.

Prerequisites

• You will need the SCons build tool [package: scons] and the GCC 3.4 C/C++ compiler [package: g++-3.4]; other GCC versions are not well-tested.

• install boost [libboost-dev]
• install boost-regex [libboost-regex-dev]
• install apr-1 [libapr1.0-dev]
• install aprutil-1 [libaprutil1.0-dev]
• install xmlrpc-epi 0.51 <http://xmlrpc-epi.sourceforge.net/>
  • note: not xmlrpc-c (xmlrpc-c has a library and headers with the same name but is not compatible)
• install jpeglib [libjpeg62-dev]
• install SDL [libsdl1.2-dev]
• install Vorbis [libvorbis-dev]
• install GTK 2.x [libgtk2.0-dev]
• unpack FMOD 3.75 <http://www.fmod.org/>
• build ELFIO <http://sourceforge.net/projects/elfio/>
• build OpenJPEG <http://www.openjpeg.org/>

Copy headers and libraries into the source tree

Here is a guide to the sequence of shell commands needed to copy the required headers and libraries into the Second Life Viewer source tree for building. Actual paths to system headers may vary according to Linux distribution.

• ${SLSRC} refers to the top-level directory of the Second Life Viewer source tree.
• ${OPENJPEG} refers to the top-level directory of your completed OpenJPEG build.
• ${FMOD} refers to the top-level directory into which you unpacked FMOD 3.
• ${ELFIO} refers to the top-level directory of your completed ELFIO build.

cp -a /usr/include/apr-1.0/ ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/apr-1

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/expat
cp -a /usr/include/expat*.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/expat/

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/zlib
cp -a /usr/include/zlib*.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/zlib/

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/openjpeg
cp ${OPENJPEG}/libopenjpeg/openjpeg.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/openjpeg/
cp ${OPENJPEG}/libopenjpeg.a ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/lib_release_client/

cp ${FMOD}/api/inc/* ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/
cp ${FMOD}/api/libfmod-3.75.so ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/lib_release_client/

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/ELFIO
cp ${ELFIO}/ELFIO/*.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/ELFIO/
cp ${ELFIO}/ELFIO/libelfio.so ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/lib_release_client/

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/jpeglib
cp -a /usr/include/j*.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/jpeglib/
touch ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/jpeglib/jinclude.h

mkdir ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/llfreetype2
cp -a /usr/include/freetype2/freetype/ ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/llfreetype2/
cp -a /usr/include/ft2build.h ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/llfreetype2/freetype/

cp -a /usr/include/atk-1.0 ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/
cp -a /usr/include/gtk-2.0 ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/
cp -a /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/include/* ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/gtk-2.0/
cp -a /usr/include/glib-2.0 ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/
cp -a /usr/lib/glib-2.0/include/* ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/glib-2.0/
cp -a /usr/include/pango-1.0 ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/

if your GTK is fairly recent and thus needs Cairo:

cp -a /usr/include/cairo/* ${SLSRC}/libraries/i686-linux/include/

Compiling

$ cd indra
$ scons DISTCC=no BTARGET=client BUILD=release

Expect a build time of a couple of hours. The resulting unstripped Second Life Viewer binary is newview/secondlife-i686-bin

Testing the result from inside the tree

• Preparing to run 'in-tree'
  • ensure that you have indra/newview/app_settings/static_*.db2 - if not, you'll find it in the 'slviewer-linux-libs' download.
  • now:

$ cp ../../scripts/messages/message_template.msg app_settings/

• Running it! The LD_LIBRARY_PATH stuff ensures that the binary looks for its libraries in the right places.

$ ( cd newview && LD_LIBRARY_PATH=../../libraries/i686-linux/lib_release_client:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/local/lib  ./secondlife-i686-bin )

Packaging the client

The automated version of generating a redistributable Second Life Viewer binary package for Linux doesn't yet work 'out of the box'. Watch this space.