- Platforms
- Get the source code
- Dependencies
- Compiling
- Using shared third party libraries
- Building Skia dependency
You should be able to compile Aseprite successfully on the following platforms:
- Windows 10 + VS2015 Community Edition + Windows 10 SDK
- macOS 10.12.1 Sierra + Xcode 8.0 + macOS 10.12 SDK + Skia
- Linux + gcc 4.8 with some C++11 support
You can get the source code downloading a Aseprite-v1.x-Source.zip
file from the latest Aseprite release:
https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/releases
Or you can clone the repository and all its submodules using the following command:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite.git
To update an existing clone you can use the following commands:
cd aseprite
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
You can use Git for Windows to clone the repository on Windows.
To compile Aseprite you will need:
Aseprite can be compiled with two different back-ends:
-
Allegro back-end (Windows, Linux): You will not need any extra library because the repository already contains a modified version of the Allegro library. This back-end is deprecated and will be removed in future versions. All new development is being done in the new Skia back-end.
-
Skia back-end (Windows, macOS): You will need a compiled version of the Skia library. Please check the details about how to build Skia on your platform.
First of all, you will need an extra little utility: awk
, used to
compile the libpng library. You can get this utility from MSYS2
distributions like MozillaBuild.
After that you have to choose the back-end:
-
If you choose the Allegro back-end, you can jump directly to the Compiling section.
-
If you choose the Skia back-end, you will need to compile Skia before and then continue in the Compiling section. Remember to check the Windows details section to know how to call
cmake
correctly.
On macOS you will need macOS 10.12 SDK and Xcode 8.0 (older versions might work).
Also, you must compile Skia before starting with the compilation.
You will need the following dependencies (Ubuntu, Debian):
sudo apt-get update -qq
sudo apt-get install -y g++ libx11-dev libxcursor-dev cmake ninja-build
The libxcursor-dev
package is needed to
hide the hardware cursor.
-
Get Aseprite code, put it in a folder like
C:\aseprite
, and create abuild
directory inside to leave all the files that are result of the compilation process (.exe
,.lib
,.obj
,.a
,.o
, etc).cd C:\aseprite mkdir build
In this way, if you want to start with a fresh copy of Aseprite source code, you can remove the
build
directory and start again. -
Enter in the new directory and execute
cmake
:cd C:\aseprite\build cmake -G Ninja ..
Here
cmake
needs different options depending on your platform. You must check the details for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Somecmake
options can be modified using tools likeccmake
orcmake-gui
. -
After you have executed and configured
cmake
, you have to compile the project:cd C:\aseprite\build ninja aseprite
-
When
ninja
finishes the compilation, you can find the executable insideC:\aseprite\build\bin\aseprite.exe
.
To choose the Skia back-end
(after you've compiled Skia) you can execute cmake
with the following arguments:
cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DUSE_ALLEG4_BACKEND=OFF -DUSE_SKIA_BACKEND=ON -DSKIA_DIR=C:\deps\skia -G Ninja ..
ninja aseprite
In this case, C:\deps\skia
is the directory where Skia was compiled
as described in Skia on Windows section.
After compiling Skia, you should run cmake
with
the following parameters and then ninja
:
cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake \
-DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=x86_64 \
-DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.7 \
-DCMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.12.sdk \
-DUSE_ALLEG4_BACKEND=OFF \
-DUSE_SKIA_BACKEND=ON \
-DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia \
-DWITH_HarfBuzz=OFF \
-G Ninja \
..
ninja aseprite
In this case, $HOME/deps/skia
is the directory where Skia was
compiled as described in Skia on macOS section.
If you have a Retina display, check the following issue:
On Linux you can specify a specific directory to install Aseprite
after a ninja install
command. For example:
cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/software -G Ninja ..
ninja aseprite
Then, you can invoke ninja install
and it will copy the program in
the given location (e.g. ~/software/bin/aseprite
on Linux).
If you don't want to use the embedded code of third party libraries
(i.e. to use your installed versions), you can disable static linking
configuring each USE_SHARED_
option.
After running cmake -G
, you can edit build/CMakeCache.txt
file,
and enable the USE_SHARED_
flag (set its value to ON
) of the
library that you want to be linked dynamically.
If you use the official version of Allegro 4.4 library (i.e. you
compile with USE_SHARED_ALLEGRO4=ON
) you will experience a couple of
known issues solved in
our patched version of Allegro 4.4 library:
- You will not be able to resize the window (patch).
- You will have problems adding HSV colors in non-English systems using the warning icon.
When you compile Aseprite with Skia as back-end on Windows or macOS, you need to compile a specific version of Skia. In the following sections you will find straightforward steps to compile Skia.
You can always check the
official Skia instructions and select
the OS you are building for. Aseprite uses the aseprite-m55
Skia
branch from https://github.com/aseprite/skia
.
Download
Google depot tools
and uncompress it in some place like C:\deps\depot_tools
.
Then open a command line follow these steps (for VS2015):
call "%VS140COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat"
set PATH=C:\deps\depot_tools;%PATH%
cd C:\deps\depot_tools
gclient sync
(The gclient
command might print an error like
Error: client not configured; see 'gclient config'
.
Just ignore it.)
cd C:\deps
git clone https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
cd skia
git checkout aseprite-m55
python bin/sync-and-gyp
(The bin/sync-and-gyp
will take some minutes because it downloads a
lot of packages, please wait and re-run the same command in case it fails.)
ninja -C out/Release dm
More information about these steps in the official Skia documentation.
These steps will create a deps
folder in your home directory with a
couple of subdirectories needed to build Skia (you can change the
$HOME/deps
with other directory). Some of these commands will take
several minutes to finish:
mkdir $HOME/deps
cd $HOME/deps
git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git
git clone https://github.com/aseprite/skia.git
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"
cd skia
git checkout aseprite-m55
python bin/sync-and-gyp
ninja -C out/Release dm
After this you should have all Skia libraries compiled. When you
compile Aseprite, remember to add
-DSKIA_DIR=$HOME/deps/skia
parameter to your cmake
call as
described in the macOS details section.
More information about these steps in the official Skia documentation.