Build latest meson on Ubuntu 18

Published: June 15, 2023

Table of contents

Update Python from 3.6 to 3.7
Other dependencies
Test
References

When I needed to build the latest plymouth for Ubuntu 18 I encountered a chain of problems preventing me doing it.

But nothing is impossible. Even ubiqutious Python we can update from 3.6 to 3.7 just to make meson happy.

Update Python from 3.6 to 3.7

Lukily there is a PPA for that

apt purge python
apt purge python3
apt install software-properties-common
add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
apt install python3.7
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.6 1
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.7 2
python3 --version

Then fix some things in the system

nano /usr/bin/gnome-terminal # 3 -> 3.6
cd /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/
ln -s apt_pkg.cpython-36m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so apt_pkg.so

wget https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/releases/download/v1.11.1/ninja-linux.zip
unzip ninja-linux.zip -d /usr/local/bin

git clone https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson.git /opt/meson
cd /opt/meson
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/pip.pyz

apt-get install python3-setuptools
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python3.7 get-pip.py

python3.7 -m pip install -e /opt/meson

Other dependencies

Some dependencies are possible to get from the official repository

apt install pkg-config \
  autoconf \
  libpng-dev \
  libpango1.0-dev \
  libdrm-dev \
  intltool \
  libudev-dev \
  libgtk-3-dev \
  xsltproc \
  libevdev-dev

But something like CMake provides a way to install the latest version

apt install git
wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.26.3/cmake-3.26.3-linux-x86_64.sh
mkdir /opt/cmake
sh cmake-3.26.3-linux-x86_64.sh --prefix=/opt/cmake --skip-license
ln -s /opt/cmake/bin/cmake /usr/local/bin/cmake

Test

Let's test our fresh install of meson by building plymouth (sha: a5eda165689864cc9a25ec14fd8c6da458598f42)

git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/plymouth
cd plymouth
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-tracing --disable-documentation
meson setup \
  --reconfigure \
  --prefix=/usr \
  --buildtype=plain \
  -D docs=false \
  . build
meson compile -C build
meson install -C build --destdir /opt/plymouth-bin

PKGBUILD as an example build configuration
And here's a list of current issues in plymouth if there is something that bothers you and it's better be on the bleeding edge of development.