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 - to help you, the source download page contains a link to a slviewer-linux-libs package which you unpack over the source tree to fill most of the dependancies (and thus avoid most of the fiddly work described on this page). 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.

• fetch and unpack FMOD 3.75 <http://www.fmod.org/>

• You may either use our easy slviewer-linux-libs bundle of pre-built libraries and headers unpacked into the Second Life Viewer source tree, or (for example if you are porting to a new architecture or wish to make a package tailored to your Linux distribution's own libraries) you will have to install the following additional dependancies:
  • boost [libboost-dev]
  • boost-regex [libboost-regex-dev]
  • apr-1 [libapr1.0-dev]
  • aprutil-1 [libaprutil1.0-dev]
  • 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)
  • jpeglib [libjpeg62-dev]
  • SDL [libsdl1.2-dev]
  • Vorbis [libvorbis-dev]
  • GTK 2.x [libgtk2.0-dev]
  • 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.
• ${FMOD} refers to the top-level directory into which you unpacked FMOD 3.

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

If you are using our easy slviewer-linux-libs bundle then you can skip the rest of this section, otherwise you will also need to perform the following:

• ${OPENJPEG} refers to the top-level directory of your completed OpenJPEG build.
• ${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/

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, from the indra directory:

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

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

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

Packaging the client

If you substitute 'BUILD=release' with 'BUILD=releasefordownload' in the 'Compiling' section above, then packaging the resulting code, libraries, data and documentation into a tarball for the end-user will be done automatically as the final stage of the build process; the pristine runtime image now lives in the directory newview/SecondLife_i686_1_X_Y_Z/ and has also been tarred into newview/SecondLife_i686_1_X_Y_Z.tar.bz2

The final packaging step may fail if you are not using the slviewer-linux-libs bundle; in this case, if you still wish to end up with an end-user viewer 'package' constructed from your own libraries, you can edit the manifest file found at linux_tools/client-manifest-i686