KPhotoAlbum/build instructions

This howto will tell you the steps required to pull, build and install the GIT version of KPhotoAlbum in Ubuntu/Debian and openSuse (scroll down)

This will allow you to test all the latest features that have not been published in the official releases or have not reached your distribution yet. Alternatively, you may want to check out the nightly built Neon packages for kphotoalbum.

Before you start - backup all your precious KPhotoAlbum files!! See #Backup.

Debian/Ubuntu

Tested 10/2023 on Kubuntu 22.04.03.

Preparations

If you've had KPhotoAlbum installed earlier from Ubuntu / Debian apt repositories, the Git KPhotoAlbum will use the same setting files as the earlier version. If you want to be able to use the previous version after installing this, please do install to custom directory, not the default one.

Uncomment / Remove # from all deb-src rows in /etc/apt/sources.list to be able to download required source files

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Update package lists & upgrade your system to most recent available packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install required build tools:

sudo apt install build-essential git cmake extra-cmake-modules libkf5kio-dev pkg-config pkg-kde-tools

Install required packages to build:

sudo apt build-dep kphotoalbum

OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED: Install other dependencies:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

Download the source code

Clone the Git repository:

git clone https://invent.kde.org/graphics/kphotoalbum.git

Building

Move to the created directory

cd kphotoalbum

Create a build-directory (so you don't mess up you source directory)

mkdir build ; cd build

Run cmake to configure the build system You can adopt the configuration to your needs by adding additional arguments to cmake:

• cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/.local: to install to a /home/username/.local directory (or any other directory you wish. See next chapter about choosing the installation directory.
• cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebugInfo: Make a debug build that will output plenty of debug messages to help track crashes etc.

These options can just be added to the regular cmake command:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/.local -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo ..

See the messages. In this stage you'll be told if you have missing dependencies. Do fix them (try to find the missing packages from the package repositories) before continuing.

Run make:

make -j=4

This uses up to 4 processes to build kphotoalbum. On a modern system you may want to increase the number. If you want to use a single process only, simply omit the -j=4 entirely.

Choosing the installation directory

While you can install kphotoalbum to any directory of your choice, some directories make life easier for you. Here are some suggestions for your install prefix:

• /usr/local(default)
  Usually included in search path, but requires root privileges for installation.
• ~/.local
  Does not require root privileges for installation. You might need to add ~/.local/bin to your search path, though.

Both of the above suggestions are also searched by default when Qt searches for application resources. Using one of them makes sure that kphotoalbum can find its own resource files (e.g. the demo database).

Do not use /usr as prefix directory! This prefix is reserved for files managed by your distribution's package manager.

Installing

Run installation:

make install

or if the installation path is not writable by your user:

sudo make install

If you have already installed a different version of kphotoalbum, and you only want to check out some specific feature, you may skip the installation step and directly run the kphotoalbum executable file in your build directory. Be aware, though, that in this case kphotoalbum uses the already installed resource files of your kphotoalbum installation. If there is not existing installation of kphotoalbum, certain features will not work correctly (demo database, HTML export, …)

Verify installation

If the install directory that you chose is not in your search path, your system won't find kphotoalbum on its own, or it may find a packaged version of kphotoalbum instead. To verify your installation, run:

which kphotoalbum

The output should start with the install prefix that you chose earlier. If it does not match, you have to add the installation directory (/YOUR_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin) to your search path, or type the full path of the executable file.

Under most shells, you can add a directory to your search path using this command:

export PATH="/YOUR_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin:$PATH"

Back up your files

By using the latest GIT versions of KPhotoAlbum you risk losing your precious files. It shouldn't happen but you never know. This would now be an excellent time to run the backups - you've just downloaded a script to backup the KPhotoAlbum config files for you so keep reading! Your photos you already have backed up, right...?

To backup your database and configuration files, run:

~/.local/bin/kpa-backup.sh --backup

If you installed to any other directory, you may need to point to that directory. If you added that dir to the path, it's enough to run kpa-backup.sh --backup

Complete backup instructions can be found under #Backup

Running

A handy feature of the cmake build-system is that it builds binaries in such a way that you can start them from within the build system. This certainly handy for quickly testing a new version of KPhotoalbum without touching anything else on your system. However, be aware that some features depend on hard-coded paths (e.g. menu-entries, Handbook, HTML Exports, Demo) and may not work as expected. These features will still use the files installed by the distributions version of KPhotoAlbum. You can just try out KPhotoalbum without installation first, and install later on (see 2.4), if you decide so.

Run from directory pointed by the instruction above:

~/.local/bin/kphotoalbum

If you installed to a non-standard directory, you have two options:

1. Start KPhotoAlbum from the directory where it was installed: /path/for/my/kphotoalbum/installation/kphotoalbum
2. Add the following line to /home/username/.bashrc so you can start KPhotoAlbum from anywhere:export KDEDIRS=/path/for/my/kphotoalbum/installation

Restart your terminal (so that .bashrc gets executed) and run

kphotoalbum

It's always a good idea to first try out things with the demo-database. Just add "--demo" when starting KPhotoalbum:

kphotoalbum --demo

Rebuild / Update

In the kphotoalbum git directory, execute:

git pull
cd build
make -j4
make install

If you want to see what has changed try git log or qgit for graphical user interface.

If you upgraded your system and the build fails afterwards, it can often help to delete the build directory (no need to delete the source directory) and run the instructions under #Building again.

Backup

This text assumes that you already back up your image files (disk failures happen). When playing with an experimental version of kphotoalbum, you may also want to backup your image database and other files that are needed by kphotoalbum.

Backup script

KPhotoalbum source code has a backup script included.

kpa-backup.sh --backup
kpa-backup.sh --restore

If the backup script is not included in an old installation of kphotoalbum, you can run the backup script directly from the GIT source directory:

script/kpa-backup.sh --backup
script/kpa-backup.sh --restore

Manual backup

Create backup directory

mkdir kpa-backup

Backup your settings:

cp -a ~/.local/share/kphotoalbum/kphotoalbumui.rc kpa-backup/
cp -a ~/.config/kphotoalbumrc kpa-backup/

And if you want to try KPhotoalbum with your real database (not the demo): Backup your database:

cp -a /path/to/your/image/folder/index.xml kpa-backup/
cp -a /path/to/your/image/folder/exif-info.db kpa-backup/

Backup the layout of your Annotation dialog:

cp -a /path/to/your/image/folder/layout.dat kpa-backup/

openSUSE

These instructions were prepared with an out of the box installation of openSUSE Leap 42.2. Leap 42.1, SLES12 and Tumbleweed should work along the same lines. In older versions of openSUSE, success depends on the completeness of the transition to QT5 in the distribution. It is assumed that installation takes place from remote repositories (not from DVD).

Use settings->yast (command line: yast2) to install packages and patterns. You need root access to enter yast.

The easiest way to get all the necessary build tools is installing the pattern "KDE development":

• In yast software management select View-> Patterns.
• scroll down and select "KDE Development" for installation. This should pull in cmake, git, gcc and most of the libraries needed.

Change to View->Search and search/select the libs AND the corresponding the *-devel packages:

• libkf5purpose
• libkdcraw
• libmarble
• libkexiv2

Check the remaining toolkit (these packages should already be checked for installation or present anyhow). Search and check for installation:

• cmake - the "extra-cmake-modules" package is needed
• git
• ffmpeg (needed for video thumbnails). This package contains ffmpeg and ffprobe.

Klick accept. Several more dependencies will be selected for installation. This is OK.

After installation it is advisable (not strictly necessary) to reboot.

Mplayer(1 or 2) is no longer necessary for video thumbnails if ffmpeg is available. In openSUSE only mplayer (1) is available as the Mplayer2 project lost support.

To get a complete set of supported codecs, it might be advisable to add the packman repository and install ffmpeg and vlc from there. The install of vlc will pull in a lot of codec libs:

• In yast software management select from the menu: Configuration -> Repositories.
• Add the packman repository from the list of community repositories or as URL:

http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/

Search and install vlc and ffmpeg:

• select a package and click on the tab "Versions"
• select the version from the packman repository

openSUSE Tumbleweed using the command line

These instructions are accurate for an openSUSE Tumbleweed installation as of 09 September 2023.

Install Build dependencies

Here are two alternative ways of installing the build dependencies of KPhotoAlbum via the command line (using zypper). Both ways should give the same results.

Alternative 1: Installing only build dependencies using zypper source-install

If the openSUSE Tumbleweed package is up to date then you can directly install just the dependencies openSUSE uses to build the KPhotoAlbum package. Note that here only the build dependencies are installed and not the KPhotoAlbum package from openSUSE Tumbleweed source repository. Instead after the build dependencies are installed, the KPhotoAlbum is built as per the instructions above.

# Enable the default openSUSE Tumbleweed Source repository (if not already enabled)
sudo zypper mr -e openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Source

# Use zypper source-install to install only the build dependencies
sudo zypper source-install --build-deps-only kphotoalbum

# Disable the default openSUSE Tumbleweed Source repository since we are not installing KPhotoAlbum from OpenSUSE sources.
sudo zypper mr -d openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Source

Alternative 2: Install build dependencies directly

sudo zypper install cmake extra-cmake-modules 'cmake(Qt5Core)' 'cmake(Qt5Sql)' 'cmake(Qt5Xml)' 'cmake(Qt5Widgets)' 'cmake(Qt5Test)' 'cmake(KF5Archive)' 'cmake(KF5Completion)' 'cmake(KF5Config)' 'cmake(KF5CoreAddons)' 'cmake(KF5I18n)' 'cmake(KF5IconThemes)' 'cmake(KF5JobWidgets)' 'cmake(KF5KIO)' 'cmake(KF5TextWidgets)' 'cmake(KF5XmlGui)' 'cmake(KF5WidgetsAddons)' 'cmake(KF5Purpose)' 'cmake(Marble)' 'cmake(exiv2)' 'cmake(KF5DocTools)'  'cmake(KF5KDcraw)' 'cmake(Phonon4Qt5)' QtAV-devel vlc-devel libjpeg-devel

Install git

sudo zypper install git

Install optional dependencies (ffmpeg)

To learn more about installing VLC (and ffmpeg) on openSUSE refer to: openSUSE's VLC page

sudo zypper install  ffmpeg