Portable Document Features

First of all, this post is a clarification of the official GNU PDF library newcomers guide, found here, and a more explicit explanation steps than those found in the INSTALL and README files of the source trunk. There is no intention here to replace, but to better explain the contents of these sources, and I encourage all readers installing the GNU PDF library to refer them.

All GNU PDF library source is managed with the bazaar version control system, so the first step is to install the bzr package. You can install it from source, from a pre-compiled package, or from your preferred repository. For the latter, and assuming a Debian-style system, you can install it by just typing on your terminal (make sure you have enough permissions to run installation of packages):

Answering yes to APT will install the packages and all dependencies needed. Now it is time for retrieving the source:

Wait a while, and source will be downloaded to ./trunk. Step inside this directory:

The autogen.sh script will do the work, but it depends on the autoconf and libtool packages, so we install them and then we bootstrap the library:

After some messages from the libtool library the source is ready to configure, but usually some dependencies are not fulfilled at this point: zlib, libgpg-error, libgcrypt, uuid-dev and libcheck. Except libcheck, the rest of the required libraries are available in the Debian/Ubuntu repos:

The GNU PDF library requires the SVN source of libcheck to assure the latest version of this library. Obviously we need the subversion package in our system, and then retrieve sources, configure, compile and install (as root):

At this point, all GNU PDF library requirements are met, so we go for it:

This will install the GNU PDF library in the default location. In most cases, you can see the compiled library objects by issuing:

In further posts we’ll explain how to use the generated dynamic library for a first hacking session with some of the actual library features. Hope this helps!