Getting Scribus on Ubuntu/Kubuntu up and running

Installation

Scribus is packaged for Debian GNU/Linux by Oleksandr (Alex) Moskalenko <malex@tagancha.org>. Please contact me at that email if you have questions that do not belong to the Debian or Scribus BTS (Bug Tracking System) or for comments about this page.

If you'd like to stay on the leading edge of Scribus development please use upstream repositories as I have to upload scribus into Debian through a sponsor and it usually takes weeks to get an upload in. Because of that the official packages are usually well-behind what is available in the upstream repositories. Please try a package from an upstream directory to test the bug you discovered as it might have already been fixed and new package is available. This is called "the Scribus magic (TM)".

To use the upstream repositories: Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb         http://debian.scribus.net/debian/ unstable/
deb-src     http://debian.scribus.net/debian/ unstable/

deb         http://debian.tagancha.org/scribus unstable/
deb-src     http://debian.tagancha.org/scribus unstable/

Once you added the sources lines you can run

aptitude install scribus

Substituted aptitude for apt-get if you wish. "scribus" package is for 1.2.xcvs stable series. You can or even should also install "scribus-cvs" package to try the new 1.3cvs series, which is pretty stable and much more featureful than 1.2. scribus-cvs package installs into /usr/local hierarchy and can be installed in parallel with the scribus package, so you can have both and even run them at the same time. However, DO NOT file bug reports about the 1.3 scribus-cvs package or any packages in the upstream repository that are newer then what is in Debian proper in the Debian BTS. Only use Debian BTS for the packages that are in Debian. If you have a Scribus issue, which is not related to Debian packaging then it is much more preferable if you use scribus BTS for reporting bugs. Go to http://bugs.scribus.net and have fun.

Sarge-specific issues

The latest gcc packages in sarge are at 3.4.3 version and the current unstable/testing have already diverged. Fortunately, as of early July 2005 sarge is not that far behind and you can get my package to work on your system by a simple package rebuild. Make sure that you have the deb-src lines for scribus repositories uncommented and run the following commands:

The cool way (TM) - as root or set up sudo for yourself as a user:

apt-get install apt-build

Answer questions about your CPU and stuff - see an excellent document at http://julien.danjou.info/article-apt-build.html)

apt-build update

apt-build install scribus (or scribus-cvs)

---

Without apt-build - as root:

apt-get build-dep scribus-cvs (or scribus)

apt-get source -b scribus scribus-cvs

---

Anoter way - as root:

apt-get install devscripts build-essential fakeroot

Note: This creates a minimal build environment.

apt-get source scribus-cvs (or "scribus" instead of "scribus-cvs")

apt-get build-dep scribus-cvs (or scribus)

cd scribus.... or scribus-cvs...

At this moment these are scribus-1.2.1+cvs20050620 and scribus-cvs-1.3+cvs20050629), but it's just an example. Use the actual directory names.

debuild -us -uc

cd ..

dpkg -i scribus_.... or scribus-cvs_....

At the moment these are scribus_1.2.1+cvs20050620-2_i386.deb and scribus-cvs_1.3+cvs20050629-1_i386.deb, but use the actual file names.

Voila - you have a scribus (1.2) or scribus-cvs (1.3) package built and optimized for your Sarge (Debian 3.1 a.k.a. stable) system.

Other Debian-based distributions

Please post your experiences about the Scribus availability on other Debian-based distributions. If you just want to get the latest package on one of them - follow the source package rebuild procedure above.

Ubuntu Linux Hoary (5.04)

Using the 1.3 CVS and the 1.2.2 CVS from the debian CVS builds and rebuilding from source works fine for me. Originally I just tried to install the these packages using just apt-get install scribus but with Ubuntu had some major dependency errors.

With the help of the scribus list, I now use (admittedly a slight variant of the building from source for Debian) notes, ie apt-get source -b scribu scribus-cvs

This alerted me to many dev libraries that were missing. Ubuntu doesnt (not surprisingly) have many dev libs installed on the std build.

Once these were all installed, I did :- apt-get build-dep scribus-cvs

This builds the scribus-cvs package for you from source. It took around half an hour, and spews out a lot of messages. Eventually, you should find a scribus-cvs deb in the directory that you are working in.

Then just do

apt-get install scribus-cvs

& Bingo !

As I said before, I'm not a Debian/Ubuntu expert and I'm sure there may be betters ways of doing this. The scribus packages do however work fine on Ubuntu when building from source. I have had NO errors part from std occasional crashes of the CVS package.