aseprite/INSTALL.md

Table of contents

• Platforms
• Get the source code
• Dependencies
  • Windows dependencies
  • macOS dependencies
  • Linux dependencies
• Compiling
  • Windows details
  • macOS details
    • Issues with Retina displays
  • Linux details
• Using shared third party libraries
• Building Skia dependency
  • Skia on Windows
  • Skia on macOS
  • Skia on Linux

Platforms

You should be able to compile Aseprite successfully on the following platforms:

• Windows 10 + Visual Studio Community 2019 + Windows 10.0.17763.0 SDK
• macOS 10.14.4 Mojave + Xcode 10.2.1 + macOS 10.14 SDK
• Linux + gcc 4.8 or clang 7.0

Get the source code

You can get the source code downloading a Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip file from the latest Aseprite release (in that case please follow the compilation instructions inside the .zip file):

https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/releases

Or you can clone the repository and all its submodules using the following command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite.git

To update an existing clone you can use the following commands:

cd aseprite
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive

You can use Git for Windows to clone the repository on Windows.

Dependencies

To compile Aseprite you will need:

• The latest version of CMake (3.14 or greater)
• Ninja build system
• You will need a compiled version of the Skia library. Please check the details about how to build Skia on your platform.

Windows dependencies

First of all, you will need:

• Windows 10 (we don't support cross-compiling and don't know if this would be possible)
• Visual Studio Community 2019
• The Desktop development with C++ item + Windows 10.0.17763.0 SDK from the Visual Studio installer

You will need to compile Skia before and then continue in the Compiling section. Remember to check the Windows details section to know how to call cmake correctly.

macOS dependencies

On macOS you will need macOS 10.14 SDK and Xcode 10.2.1 (older versions might work).

You must also compile Skia before starting with the compilation.

Linux dependencies

You will need the following dependencies on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install -y g++ cmake ninja-build libx11-dev libxcursor-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libfontconfig1-dev

On Fedora:

sudo yum install -y gcc-c++ cmake ninja-build libX11-devel libXcursor-devel mesa-libGL-devel fontconfig-devel

You must also compile Skia before starting with the compilation.

Compiling

1. Get Aseprite code, put it in a folder like C:\aseprite, and create a build directory inside to leave all the files that are result of the compilation process (.exe, .lib, .obj, .a, .o, etc).

    cd C:\aseprite
    mkdir build
   

   In this way, if you want to start with a fresh copy of Aseprite source code, you can remove the build directory and start again.

2. Enter in the new directory and execute cmake:

    cd C:\aseprite\build
    cmake -G Ninja ..
   

   Here cmake needs different options depending on your platform. You must check the details for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Some cmake options can be modified using tools like ccmake or cmake-gui.

3. After you have executed and configured cmake, you have to compile the project:

    cd C:\aseprite\build
    ninja aseprite
   

4. When ninja finishes the compilation, you can find the executable inside C:\aseprite\build\bin\aseprite.exe.

Windows details

After you've compiled Skia, open a developer command prompt or in the command line (cmd.exe) call:

call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=x64

And then

cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DLAF_OS_BACKEND=skia -DSKIA_DIR=C:\deps\skia -DSKIA_OUT_DIR=C:\deps\skia\out\Release -G Ninja ..
ninja aseprite

In this case, C:\deps\skia is the directory where Skia was compiled as described in Skia on Windows section.

macOS details

After compiling Skia, you should run cmake with the following parameters and then ninja:

cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=x86_64 \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9 \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk \
  -DLAF_OS_BACKEND=skia \
  -DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia \
  -DSKIA_OUT_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia/out/Release \
  -G Ninja \
  ..
ninja aseprite

In this case, $HOME/deps/skia is the directory where Skia was compiled as described in Skia on macOS section. Make sure that CMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT is pointing to the correct SDK directory (in this case /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk), but it could be different in your Mac.

Issues with Retina displays

If you have a Retina display, check the following issue:

https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/589

Linux details

First you have to compile Skia, then you should run cmake with the following parameters and then ninja:

cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo \
  -DLAF_OS_BACKEND=skia \
  -DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia \
  -DSKIA_OUT_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia/out/Release \
  -G Ninja \
  ..
ninja aseprite

In this case, $HOME/deps/skia is the directory where Skia was compiled as described in Skia on Linux section.

Using shared third party libraries

If you don't want to use the embedded code of third party libraries (i.e. to use your installed versions), you can disable static linking configuring each USE_SHARED_ option.

After running cmake -G, you can edit build/CMakeCache.txt file, and enable the USE_SHARED_ flag (set its value to ON) of the library that you want to be linked dynamically.

Building Skia dependency

When you compile Aseprite with Skia as back-end on Windows or macOS, you need to compile a specific version of Skia. In the following sections you will find straightforward steps to compile Skia.

You can always check the official Skia instructions and select the OS you are building for. Aseprite uses the aseprite-m71 Skia branch from https://github.com/aseprite/skia.

Skia on Windows

Download Google depot tools and uncompress it in some place like C:\deps\depot_tools.

It's recommended to compile Skia with Clang to get better performance. So you will need to download Clang, and install it on a folder like C:\deps\llvm (a folder without whitespaces).

Open a developer command prompt or command line (cmd.exe) and call:

call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=x64

Then:

set PATH=C:\deps\depot_tools;%PATH%
cd C:\deps\depot_tools
gclient sync

(The gclient command might print an error like Error: client not configured; see 'gclient config'. Just ignore it.)

cd C:\deps
git clone -b aseprite-m71 https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
cd skia
set GIT_EXECUTABLE=git.bat
python tools/git-sync-deps

(The tools/git-sync-deps will take some minutes because it downloads a lot of packages, please wait and re-run the same command in case it fails.)

Finally, if you've downloaded Clang, use this command:

set PATH=C:\deps\llvm\bin;%PATH%
gn gen out/Release --args="is_official_build=true skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false target_cpu=""x64"" cc=""clang"" cxx=""clang++"" clang_win=""c:\deps\llvm"" win_vc=""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC"""
ninja -C out/Release skia

If you haven't installed Clang, and want to compile Skia with MSVC (anyway it's not recommended because the performance penalty is too big), you can use the following commands instead:

gn gen out/Release --args="is_official_build=true skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false target_cpu=""x64"" win_vc=""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC"""
ninja -C out/Release skia

More information about these steps in the official Skia documentation.

Skia on macOS

These steps will create a deps folder in your home directory with a couple of subdirectories needed to build Skia (you can change the $HOME/deps with other directory). Some of these commands will take several minutes to finish:

mkdir $HOME/deps
cd $HOME/deps
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
git clone -b aseprite-m71 https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"
cd skia
python tools/git-sync-deps
gn gen out/Release --args="is_official_build=true skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_icu=false skia_use_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false extra_cflags_cc=[\"-frtti\"]"
ninja -C out/Release skia

After this you should have all Skia libraries compiled. When you compile Aseprite, remember to add -DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia parameter to your cmake call as described in the macOS details section.

More information about these steps in the official Skia documentation.

Skia on Linux

These steps will create a deps folder in your home directory with a couple of subdirectories needed to build Skia (you can change the $HOME/deps with other directory). Some of these commands will take several minutes to finish:

mkdir $HOME/deps
cd $HOME/deps
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
git clone -b aseprite-m71 https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"
cd skia
python tools/git-sync-deps
gn gen out/Release --args="is_debug=false is_official_build=true skia_use_system_expat=false skia_use_system_icu=false skia_use_system_libjpeg_turbo=false skia_use_system_libpng=false skia_use_system_libwebp=false skia_use_system_zlib=false"
ninja -C out/Release skia

After this you should have all Skia libraries compiled. When you compile Aseprite, remember to add -DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia parameter to your cmake call as described in the Linux details section.

More information about these steps in the official Skia documentation.