Introduction to Cairo
Cairo is a 2D graphics library
with support for multiple output devices. Currently supported
output targets include the X
Window System, Win32, image buffers, PostScript, PDF and SVG.
Experimental backends include OpenGL, Quartz and XCB file output.
Cairo is designed to produce
consistent output on all output media while taking advantage of
display hardware acceleration when available (e.g. through the X
Render Extension). The Cairo API
provides operations similar to the drawing operators of PostScript
and PDF. Operations in Cairo
include stroking and filling cubic Bézier splines, transforming and
compositing translucent images, and antialiased text rendering. All
drawing operations can be transformed by any affine
transformation (scale, rotation, shear, etc.)
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages
properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most
recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
Additional Downloads
Cairo Dependencies
Required
libpng-1.6.44 and Pixman-0.44.0
Recommended
Fontconfig-2.15.0, GLib-2.82.2
(required for most GUIs), and Xorg Libraries
Optional
ghostscript-10.04.0, GTK-Doc-1.34.0, libdrm-2.4.123, librsvg-2.59.2, libxml2-2.13.5, LZO-2.10, Poppler-24.11.0, Valgrind-3.24.0, GTK+-2, and
libspectre
Note
There is a circular dependency between cairo and harfbuzz. If
cairo is built before harfbuzz, it is necessary to rebuild cairo
after harfbuzz in order to build pango.
Installation of Cairo
First, fix a bug that causes problems with printing PDF files:
patch -Np1 -i ../cairo-1.18.2-upstream_fixes-1.patch
Install Cairo by running the
following commands:
mkdir build &&
cd build &&
meson setup --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release .. &&
ninja
This package does not have a working test suite.
Now, as the root user:
ninja install
Command Explanations
--buildtype=release:
Specify a buildtype suitable for stable releases of the package, as
the default may produce unoptimized binaries.
-D xlib-xcb=enabled: This switch
enables several experimental Xlib/XCB functions used by some window
managers.
-D gtk_doc=true: Use this parameter if
GTK-Doc is installed and you wish to create and install the
documentation.