Quick notes on compiling GIMP 2.6.0 for Ubuntu 8.04

GIMP 2.6.0 has been released and you are curious what's new? You can compile it yourself and try it out.

Basic procedure:

1) Install the necessary packages to compile programs. Make sure gcc, g++, ruby (for the docs), and the development versions of some basic libraries are installed. If one of the "configure" processes below fails because it needs a certain library, install it. For instance, if configure tells you "Can't find xxx", install "libxxx-dev".

After each of the following "configure"s, you will see which libraries will be used when compiling and which will be not. Example:

...
Windows ICO yes
WMF: no (libwmf not found)
XJT: yes
...

So if you need WMF (Windows Metafile) support, you would have to install libwmf-dev.

For my version of GIMP, I have installed these libraries, maybe you want them too: graphviz-dev libaa1-dev libexif-dev libgnomeui-dev libgtk2.0-dev liblcms1-dev libpoppler-dev librsvg2-dev libtiff-dev libwebkitgtk-dev libxpm-dev python-gtk2-dev

2) Download the tarballs from the respective file servers (take the most recent version):
babl from ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/babl/
GEGL from ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gegl/
GIMP from ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/

3) Extract babl, then do:
./configure --prefix=/opt/gimp-2.6
make
sudo make install

4) Make binaries, includes, libraries in /opt/gimp-2.6 available for use:
export PATH=/opt/gimp-2.6/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/gimp-2.6/lib
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/gimp-2.6/lib/pkgconfig

5) Extract GEGL, then do:
./configure --prefix=/opt/gimp-2.6
make
sudo make install

6) Extract GIMP, then do:
./configure --prefix=/opt/gimp-2.6
make
sudo make install

7) Enjoy with "/opt/gimp-2.6/bin/gimp-2.6"