How to install autotrace in Ubuntu 18.04?

Question

Ubuntu 16.04 had a package for autotrace, but 18.04 does not seem to have any.

What is the easiest way to install autotrace on Ubuntu?

Answer 1

Sadly I haven't found a ppa or replacement for this on Bionic (18.04) and Cosmic (18.10), but I just now compiled from source without issues (on both) as follows:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install intltool imagemagick libmagickcore-dev pstoedit libpstoedit-dev

git clone https://github.com/autotrace/autotrace.git
cd autotrace
#unnecessary command for clarification should bugs be introduced later
git rev-parse HEAD
#6468859336870a663106d8179578867caf2cfced

./autogen.sh
#put everything into /usr/{bin,lib,share,include}
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib ./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

PSTOEDIT SUPPORT IS WORKING. Ming (swf support) is the only thing disabled as the libming-dev package is also unavailable. No need to link anything.

which autotrace
/usr/bin/autotrace

autotrace -v
AutoTrace version 0.40.0.

uname -rvm
4.18.0-15-lowlatency #16-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 7 12:28:15 UTC 2019 x86_64

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.10
Release:    18.10
Codename:   cosmic

You can safely uninstall (should a .deb become available) by redoing the exact same install process once again and add:

sudo make uninstall

If this isn't working for you I'm guessing it's a missing .deb on your system. Comment with your issue and ill update the apt syntax accordingly.

Answer 2

Here is a rather boring solution.
Any better solution is warmly welcome! :-)

Compile from source code, excluding pstoedit because otherwise compilation fails:

sudo apt install intltool imagemagick libmagickcore-dev pstoedit
git clone [email protected]:autotrace/autotrace.git
cd autotrace
./autogen.sh
./configure --without-pstoedit
make
sudo make install

Running it fails miserably:

autotrace: error while loading shared libraries: libautotrace.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

But this works:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib autotrace -v
AutoTrace version 0.40.0.

In order to make other software (such as Inkscape) find it, I had to do the following:

cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libautotrace.a libautotrace.a
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libautotrace.la libautotrace.la
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libautotrace.so libautotrace.so
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libautotrace.so.3 libautotrace.so.3
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libautotrace.so.3.0.0 libautotrace.so.3.0.0