Compiling and Patching Snowglobe (Linux)
Snowglobe is where open development is most active right now. Follow these instructions to compile (and patch) Snowglobe sources on Linux using SVN.
| Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination | Note: This page is meant to be a quick, step-by-step, easy-to-mantain reference. See Compiling the viewer (Linux) for all the gory details and bleeding edge information about dependencies, libraries, standalone, errors, etc. |
Step 0. Review BUILD.LINUX.md
There is a BUILD.LINUX.md markdown file in the active develop-linux branch (see Step 2) which will eventually become the primary documentation for building the SL viewer on Linux. In the meantime the instructions below may also be helpful.
Step 1. Install Requirements
- Python 3.7+
- Git
- CMake 3.20+ (need to be able to handle
--configoption) - Native packages and tools (this list may be incomplete, please update as new dependencies are discovered):
libfontconfig-dev libglib2.0-dev libglvnd-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libosmesa6-dev libvlc-dev libwayland-dev libx11-dev ninja-build python3-venv
- Autobuild (probably best installed in a virtual environment)
Intermediate Check
Confirm things are installed properly so far by typing the following in a terminal:
cmake --version python3 --version git --version autobuild --version
If everything reported sensible values and not "Command not found" errors, then you are in good shape!
Step 2. Checkout Code
Viewer
Open a terminal and checkout the viewer source code:
git clone https://github.com/secondlife/viewer.git
Until it is merged into the develop branch you need to checkout develop-linux:
cd viewer git checkout develop-linux
Build Variables
See Building the Viewer with Autobuild#Select Build Variables
Step 3. Configure
Be sure you have the following environment variables set before continuing:
AUTOBUILD_ADDRSIZE=64 AUTOBUILD_VARIABLES_FILE=<path to autobuild viewer variables>
Configuring and building with autobuild works the same on all platforms. Full instructions may be found at Build_Viewer_With_Autobuild.
autobuild configure -c RelWithDebInfoOS
Step 4. Build
autobuild build
Running your newly built viewer
Step 5. Run
To launch the viewer you built, from your source tree root directory, run:
build-linux-x86_64/newview/packaged/secondlife
Step 6. Optional
Running Unit Tests
TODO: provide instructions for running unit tests.
Optional: Installing Proprietary Libraries
Some builds of the the Viewer depends on proprietary libraries (alternative open source libraries are also provided for developers who prefer or are not licensed to use the proprietary libraries). Lindens do not distribute these libraries, so you will need to fetch and install these even if you download the libraries packages. (This is due to licensing restrictions. Don't ask, Lindens already did, and can't get permission. So you do have to get them yourself.)
TODO: provide instructions for building proprietary libraries.
Handling Problems
If you encounter errors or run into problems following the instructions above, please first check whether someone else already had the same issue. A solution might be known already.
You may find the solution in any of these resources:
- This talk page (Report useful experiences there)
- Issue list below (If new issues, please add it to talk page above instead of there)
- Old talk page
- Common compilation problems (Rather old)
- Issue tracker
- Fix it: Modifying CMake Files and please, submit a patch!
Getting Help
Even when no description of your problem has been written down yet, someone might know about it, so get in touch with the community to get help.
- Subscribe to OpenSource-Dev Mailing List (subscribe) and post your question there.
Get last Snowglobe Trunk sources
Working with the Snowglobe 1.x code base:
svn co http://svn.secondlife.com/svn/linden/projects/2009/snowglobe/trunk
If you want to build the Snowglobe 2.x code base:
svn co http://svn.secondlife.com/svn/linden/projects/2010/snowglobe/trunk
Get current libraries and artwork
./trunk/scripts/public_fetch_tarballs.py
Prepare / configure (OLD)
cd trunk/indra/ ./develop.py configure
Prepare / configure
cd trunk/indra/ cmake .
Patch
Learn how and where to apply a patch.
cd (...)/trunk/ patch -p1 < /path/to/your-patch.txt
Compile
cd indra/viewer-linux-i686-relwithdebinfo make
After compilation you get (...)/linden/indra/viewer-linux-i686-relwithdebinfo/newview/Snowglobe-something.tar.bz2 — copy it somewhere, extract it and do as usual.
If some of the supplied prebuilt libraries are not compatible with your operating system (which you'll only discover after trying), then on future builds, abort the make after it's completed installing the prebuilts and starts listing compile percentages, remove the offending libraries from linden/libraries/i686-linux/lib_release_client/, run make clean, and finally rerun make to build without any more manual intervention.