Linux-specific notes

Requirements

These instructions are written for Debian/Ubuntu; adjust for your distribution. Some extra notes have been provided by a forum member, though some of the things mentioned there no longer apply: https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/guide-how-to-build-and-run-anki-from-source-with-xubuntu-20-04/12865

You can see a full list of buildtime and runtime requirements by looking at the Dockerfiles used to build the official releases.

Ensure some basic tools are installed:

$ sudo apt install bash grep findutils curl gcc g++ make git rsync

The 'find' utility is 'findutils' on Debian.

Missing Libraries

If you get errors during build or startup, try starting with

QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 ./run

It will likely complain about missing libraries, which you can install with your package manager. Some of the libraries that might be required on Debian for example:

sudo apt install libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 \
  libxcb-randr0 libxcb-render-util0

On some distros such as Arch Linux and Fedora, you may need to install the libxcrypt-compat package if you get an error like this:

error while loading shared libraries: libcrypt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Audio

To play and record audio during development, install mpv and lame.

Glibc and Qt

Anki requires a recent glibc.

If you are using a distro that uses musl, Anki will not work.

If your glibc version is 2.35+ on AMD64 or 2.39+ on ARM64, you can skip the rest of this section.

If your system has an older glibc, you won't be able to use the PyQt wheels that are available in pip/PyPy, and will need to use your system-installed PyQt instead. Your distro will also need to have Python 3.9 or later.

After installing the system libraries (eg: 'sudo apt install python3-pyqt6.qt{quick,webengine} python3-venv pyqt6-dev-tools'), find the place they are installed (eg '/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages'). On modern Ubuntu, you'll also need 'sudo apt remove python3-protobuf'. Then before running any commands like './run', tell Anki where the packages can be found:

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages
export PYTHON_BINARY=/usr/bin/python3

There are a few things to be aware of:

You should use ./run and not tools/run-qt5*, even if your system libraries are Qt5.
If your system libraries are Qt5, when creating an aqt wheel, the wheel will not work on Qt6 environments.
Some of the './ninja check' tests are broken on ARM Linux.

Packaging considerations

Python, node and protoc are downloaded as part of the build. You can optionally define PYTHON_BINARY, NODE_BINARY, YARN_BINARY and/or PROTOC_BINARY to use locally-installed versions instead.

If rust-toolchain.toml is removed, newer Rust versions can be used. Older versions may or may not compile the code.

To build Anki fully offline, set the following environment variables:

OFFLINE_BUILD: If set, the build does not run tools that may access the network.
NODE_BINARY, YARN_BINARY and PROTOC_BINARY must also be set.

With OFFLINE_BUILD defined, manual intervention is required for the offline build to succeed. The following conditions must be met:

All required dependencies (node, Python, rust, yarn, etc.) must be present in the build environment.
The offline repositories for the translation files must be copied/linked to ftl/qt-repo and ftl/core-repo.
The Python pseudo venv must be set up:
```
mkdir out/pyenv/bin
ln -s /path/to/python out/pyenv/bin/python
ln -s /path/to/protoc-gen-mypy out/pyenv/bin/protoc-gen-mypy
```
Optionally, set up your environment to generate Sphinx documentation:
```
ln -s /path/to/sphinx-apidoc out/pyenv/bin/sphinx-apidoc
ln -s /path/to/sphinx-build out/pyenv/bin/sphinx-build
```
Note that the PYTHON_BINARY environment variable need not be set, since it is only used when OFFLINE_BUILD is unset to automatically create a network-dependent Python venv.
Create the offline cache for yarn and use its own environment variable YARN_CACHE_FOLDER to it:
```
YARN_CACHE_FOLDER=/path/to/the/yarn/cache
/path/to/yarn install --ignore-scripts
```

You are now ready to build wheels and Sphinx documentation fully offline.

For info on running tests, building wheels and so on, please see Development.

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