Compiling development builds on Linux

Testing development builds and reporting bugs before a major version is released is a huge help in the development process. It allows for more bugs to be found because each person uses Inkscape differently so the more testers there are the more bugs are found. It also alleviates testing for programmers so they can spend more time fixing the bugs and implementing new features.

This recipe will show us how to build a development version of Inkscape on Linux.

Getting ready

Inkscape development is done through the launchpad.net service which uses the Bazaar distributed version control system. To be able to pull the development source check that you have Bazaar packages installed on your system.

To be able to run Inkscape with all of its features it's necessary to have all the dependencies installed too. Find the list on the Inkscape website and use your favorite package installer to install them.

If you're on Ubuntu you can use this command:

$ sudo apt...