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
  • Linux issues
• Building Skia dependency
  • Skia on Windows
  • Skia on macOS

Platforms

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

• Windows 10 + VS2015 Community Edition + Windows 10 SDK
• macOS 10.12.1 Sierra + Xcode 8.0 + macOS 10.12 SDK + Skia
• Linux + gcc 4.8 with some C++11 support

Get the source code

You can get the source code downloading a Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip file from the latest Aseprite release:

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 (3.4 or greater)
• Ninja build system

Aseprite can be compiled with two different back-ends:

1. Allegro back-end (Windows, Linux): You will not need any extra library because the repository already contains a modified version of the Allegro library. This back-end is deprecated and will be removed in future versions. All new development is being done in the new Skia back-end.

2. Skia back-end (Windows, macOS): 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)
• VS2015 Community Edition (VS2017 should work too)
• Windows 10 SDK (it's included with VS2015, remember to install it)

Then, you will need an extra little utility: awk, used to compile the libpng library. You can get this utility from MSYS2 distributions like MozillaBuild.

After that you have to choose the back-end:

1. If you choose the Allegro back-end, you can jump directly to the Compiling section.

2. If you choose the Skia back-end, 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.

The official version of Aseprite is compiled with the Skia back-end.

macOS dependencies

On macOS you will need macOS 10.12 SDK and Xcode 8.0 (older versions might work).

Also, you must compile Skia before starting with the compilation.

Linux dependencies

You will need the following dependencies (Ubuntu, Debian):

sudo apt-get update -qq
sudo apt-get install -y g++ libx11-dev libxcursor-dev cmake ninja-build

The libxcursor-dev package is needed to hide the hardware cursor.

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

To choose the Skia back-end (after you've compiled Skia) you can execute cmake with the following arguments:

cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DUSE_ALLEG4_BACKEND=OFF -DUSE_SKIA_BACKEND=ON -DSKIA_DIR=C:\deps\skia -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_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=x86_64 \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.7 \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.12.sdk \
  -DUSE_ALLEG4_BACKEND=OFF \
  -DUSE_SKIA_BACKEND=ON \
  -DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia \
  -DWITH_HarfBuzz=OFF \
  -G Ninja \
  ..
ninja aseprite

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

Issues with Retina displays

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

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

Linux details

On Linux you can specify a specific directory to install Aseprite after a ninja install command. For example:

cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/software -G Ninja ..
ninja aseprite

Then, you can invoke ninja install and it will copy the program in the given location (e.g. ~/software/bin/aseprite on Linux).

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.

Linux issues

If you use the official version of Allegro 4.4 library (i.e. you compile with USE_SHARED_ALLEGRO4=ON) you will experience a couple of known issues solved in our patched version of Allegro 4.4 library:

• You will not be able to resize the window (patch).
• You will have problems adding HSV colors in non-English systems using the warning icon.

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-m55 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.

Then open a command line follow these steps (for VS2015):

call "%VS140COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat"
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 https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
cd skia
git checkout aseprite-m55
python bin/sync-and-gyp

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

ninja -C out/Release dm

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 $HOME/deps
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
git clone https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"
cd skia
git checkout aseprite-m55
python bin/sync-and-gyp
ninja -C out/Release dm

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.